Brian Mulroney — who, as Canada’s 18th prime minister, steered the country through a tumultuous period in national and world affairs — has died. He was 84.
His daughter Caroline Mulroney shared the news Thursday afternoon on social media.
“On behalf of my mother and our family, it is with great sadness we announce the passing of my father, The Right Honourable Brian Mulroney, Canada’s 18th Prime Minister. He died peacefully, surrounded by family,” she said on X, formerly Twitter.
Former prime minister Brian Mulroney has died. He was 84. His daughter Caroline Mulroney shared the news Thursday afternoon on social media.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he was “devastated” to hear of Mulroney’s passing.
“He never stopped working for Canadians, and he always sought to make this country an even better place to call home. I’ll never forget the insights he shared with me over the years — he was generous, tireless, and incredibly passionate,” he said in a statement on X.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said Mulroney was one of Canada’s “greatest ever statesmen.”
“I will always be thankful for his candid advice and generous mentorship to me personally. All Canadians are grateful for his immense sacrifice and the lasting legacy he leaves us all,” Poilievre said in a statement on X.
Mulroney was one of Canada’s most controversial prime ministers. Unafraid to tackle the most challenging issues of his era, Mulroney pursued politics in a way that earned him devoted supporters — and equally passionate critics.
Mulroney was a gifted public speaker and a skilled politician. As prime minister, he brokered a free trade deal with the U.S. and pushed for constitutional reforms to secure Quebec’s signature on Canada’s supreme law — an effort that ultimately failed.
He introduced a national sales tax to raise funds against ballooning budget deficits, privatized some Crown corporations and stood strongly against racial apartheid in South Africa during one of the most eventful tenures of any Canadian prime minister.
“Whether one agrees with our solutions or not, none will accuse us of having chosen to evade our responsibilities by side-stepping the most controversial issues of our time,” Mulroney said in his February 1993 resignation address.
“I’ve done the very best for my country and my party.”
A fateful friendship
Mulroney was born to working class Irish-Canadian parents in the forestry town of Baie-Comeau in 1939. His father was a paper mill electrician in this hardscrabble outpost in Quebec’s northeast.
Mulroney grew up with a bicultural world view in an isolated community split between French and English speakers — an upbringing that would prove to be politically useful later.
Mulroney became interested in Conservative politics through a fateful friendship with Lowell Murray, a future senator and cabinet minister in his government. Murray convinced his charismatic classmate to join the Progressive Conservative campus club at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, N.S.
A lawyer by training, Mulroney made a name for himself in his home province as an anti-corruption crusader. After violence erupted at the James Bay hydroelectric dam construction site, Mulroney was brought in to investigate Mafia ties as the lead member of the Cliche commission reviewing the bungled project.
Progressive Conservative leadership candidate Brian Mulroney speaks to delegates at an informal gathering in a hotel suite in Ottawa, ON Feb. 18, 1976. (The Canadian Press)
Following a failed Progressive Conservative leadership bid in 1976, Mulroney took the reins of the party after organizing opposition to then-leader Joe Clark at the 1983 leadership convention. Mulroney — who had never previously held elected office — unseated the former prime minister from the leadership on the strength of his support among delegates from Quebec.
With the Liberals faltering in the polls, Mulroney led the PCs to a majority victory in the 1984 campaign — one of the largest election landslides in Canadian history. While Pierre Elliott Trudeau had been replaced by John Turner as Liberal leader by the time the 1984 campaign began, the election was widely seen as a referendum on Trudeau’s sometimes turbulent time in office.
Mulroney would win again in 1988 after voters backed his plan to sign a free trade agreement with the U.S. — easily the most consequential policy of the Mulroney era.
‘Irish Eyes are Smiling’
Mulroney was elected to office in 1984 promising to “refurbish” the Canada-U.S. relationship after years of tension. He fended off claims from the Turner-led Liberal Party that a free trade deal with the U.S. would diminish Canada’s sovereignty and turn the country into a ”51st state.”
During a widely watched televised leaders’ debate in 1988, Turner accused Mulroney of selling out Canada. “You don’t have a monopoly on patriotism — and I resent the fact, your implication that only you are a Canadian,” Mulroney fired back.
Mulroney would be re-elected with another majority government — the first time a conservative prime minister had won two consecutive majorities since Sir John A. Macdonald.
Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and President Ronald Reagan walk past a line of Royal Canadian Mounted Police March 17, 1985 at the Quebec City airport. (Paul Chiasson/The Canadian Press)
Trade between the two countries grew dramatically after the free trade deal was ratified and the economies became even more intertwined after nearly 100 years of protectionism came to an end.
“Our message is clear here and around the world — Canada is open for business again,” Mulroney said at the 1985 “Shamrock Summit” alongside U.S. President Ronald Reagan.
The two men, both of Irish extraction, famously sang lines from the folk song When Irish Eyes are Smiling at that Quebec City meeting. The musical interlude was celebrated by some as a sign of thawing relations between the two countries — and derided by others as a sign of Canada kowtowing to its powerful neighbour.
U.S. Trade Representative Carla Hills, seated in the centre, with her Mexican and Canadian counterparts, as well as all three countries’ leaders, as they sign the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1992. (Pat Sullivan/AP Photo)
Mulroney improved Canada’s relationship with the U.S and pushed Reagan to sign the acid rain treaty to curb sulfur dioxide emissions that were destroying waterways. He also signed a North American air defence modernization agreement to better protect the continent from a ballistic missile attack.
Former U.S. president George H.W. Bush considered Mulroney a close personal friend — Mulroney was Bush’s last guest at Camp David, the presidential retreat — and often sought his counsel on Cold War-related matters as an alliance of western nations negotiated an end to the Soviet Union with Mikhail Gorbachev.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau would tap Mulroney’s deep U.S. connections in 2017-18 as the NAFTA renegotiation efforts started to go sideways. Mulroney, who owned a home in Palm Beach, Fla. — not far from then-president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago — was a useful intermediary between Trudeau’s Liberal government and the Republican administration.
A delicate dance with Quebec and a failed accord
During his time in federal politics, Mulroney assembled an electoral coalition of western populists, Quebec nationalists and traditional Tories — an alliance that succeeded in keeping the Liberals out of power for nearly 10 years.
Mulroney’s first landslide majority win — the PCs captured 211 of 282 seats in the Commons in the 1984 vote — gave him the leeway to make fundamental reforms to the Canadian state. Under Mulroney’s leadership, dozens of Crown corporations were sold to private interests, including Air Canada. He also scrapped Trudeau’s much-maligned National Energy Program, a decision welcomed by many westerners.
That electoral coalition eventually would collapse after the emergence of the Bloc Québécois and the Reform Party — groups that capitalized on regional grievances that grew even more stark during Mulroney’s time in office.
Mulroney — who stressed the importance of Quebec to a successful conservative movement during his party leadership bid ��— trounced his Liberal opponents in the province with a promise to bring Quebec onside with the Constitution.
Quebec Premier Rene Levesque gets together with Prime Minister Brian Mulroney for an animated chat at the Federal Provincial conference on Aboriginal Rights in Ottawa April 2, 1985. (The Canadian Press)
In 1981-82, the separatist Quebec government led by René Lévesque and the Parti Québécois refused to sign Trudeau’s repatriated Constitution Act, fearing the Charter of Rights and Freedoms would centralize power in Ottawa and dilute provincial influence.
In an attempt to heal those wounds, Mulroney brokered the 1987 Meech Lake constitutional accord with Quebec — then led by federalist Liberal Premier Robert Bourassa — and the other provinces. The accord would have recognized Quebec as a “distinct society” within Canada and would have extended greater powers to the provinces to nominate people for federal institutions like the Senate and the Supreme Court of Canada.
The accord also would have bolstered the provinces’ role in the immigration system and made changes to how social programs were to be funded — allowing provinces to opt out of some programs and accept federal funding to create their own.
While initially popular with voters — many English Canadians believed this overture to Quebec would silence separatism and prevent a repeat of the 1980 sovereignty referendum — the deal crumbled after Trudeau emerged from retirement to oppose it. The former PM accused Mulroney of conceding too much to the provinces and argued the accord would “render the Canadian state totally impotent.”
Lucien Bouchard was persuaded by his good friend at the time, then-Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, to run for office in 1988. Mulroney’s once-faithful cabinet minister quit the Progressive Conservative government over the failure of the Meech Lake Accord to found the Bloc Quebecois. (Jaques Boissinot/Canadian Press)
Many in English Canada also grew leery of recognizing Quebec as a “distinct society.” Ultimately, the provinces failed to ratify the deal by its deadline, with Newfoundland and Labrador and Manitoba as notable holdouts.
“It’s a sad day for Canada. This was all about Canada, about the unity of our country,” Mulroney said of the accord’s defeat.
Lucien Bouchard, Mulroney’s Quebec lieutenant and a former colleague at the Cliche anti-corruption commission, angrily left the PC government after the accord failed and formed the Bloc, a party devoted to Quebec’s interests. Bouchard, widely respected in Quebec, torpedoed Mulroney’s support in that province.
Another Mulroney-led attempt at constitutional reform, the Charlottetown Accord of 1992, was later defeated in a national referendum.
A deeply unpopular tax
Amid the constitutional fracas and after the introduction of the deeply unpopular Goods and Services Tax (GST), Mulroney’s popularity declined dramatically. He posted record-low approval ratings at the end of his second term.
After negotiating the free trade deal with the U.S., Mulroney sought to reform the existing manufacturers’ sales tax (MST) system that, he said, put Canada’s exporters at a disadvantage.
That 13.5 per cent tax was largely invisible to the consumer, while the consumption-based GST that would replace it — a 7 per cent levy on all goods and services purchased in Canada — was to be paid directly at the cash register.
With the Queen’s approval, Mulroney stacked the Senate with supporters to get the deeply unpopular bill through the Liberal-dominated upper house.
South African anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela raises his arms as he is acknowledged by the Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and other members of Parliament in Ottawa, June 18, 1990. (Fred Chartrand/Canadian Press)
“It is clearly not popular, but we’re doing it because it’s right for Canada. It must be done,” Mulroney said of the tax in 1990.
In the 1993 election campaign following Mulroney’s departure from the federal scene, then Liberal leader Jean Chretien — hoping to capitalize on voter frustration — made “Axe the Tax” his campaign mantra.
Chretien easily beat Mulroney’s successor, Kim Campbell, but never followed through on his promise to scrap the tax as it raked in billions of dollars in government revenue — money used to pay down Canada’s substantial national debt.
“Quite frankly, it’s interesting to me to sit back many years later, having had to endure the abuse and recriminations and the pounding, and to see that it’s turned out well for Canada. That’s all I wanted,” Mulroney said in 2010.
A break with allies on apartheid
While often associated with two other leading conservative figures of the era — Reagan and former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher — Mulroney broke ranks with some of his closest allies on one issue: apartheid and sanctions against the South African white minority regime.
Reagan and Thatcher were both vehemently anti-communist. They feared that South African black leaders like Nelson Mandela were Marxists intent on turning the country away from liberal democracy. Mulroney, who had long admired John Diefenbaker’s anti-apartheid stance decades ago, saw the state’s system of racist repression as fundamentally unjust.
After his election, Mulroney launched an aggressive Canadian push within the Commonwealth for sanctions to pressure the South African government to dismantle its racist caste system and release Mandela from prison, where he had been locked up for a quarter century.
Upon his release, Mandela spoke with Mulroney by phone to thank him for his advocacy.
“We regard you as one of our great friends because of the solid support we have received from you and Canada over the years,” Mandela told Mulroney, according to the prime minister’s book, Memoirs. “When I was in jail, having friends like you in Canada gave me more joy and support than I can say.”
PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona voters have approved a constitutional amendment guaranteeing abortion access up to fetal viability, typically after 21 weeks — a major win for advocates of the measure in the presidential battleground state who have been seeking to expand access beyond the current 15-week limit.
Arizona was one of nine states with abortion on the ballot. Democrats have centered abortion rights in their campaigns since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. Abortion-rights supporters prevailed in all seven abortion ballot questions in 2022 and 2023, including in conservative-leaning states.
Arizona for Abortion Access, the coalition leading the state campaign, gathered well over the 383,923 signatures required to put it on the ballot, and the secretary of state’s office verified that enough were valid. The coalition far outpaced the opposition campaign, It Goes Too Far, in fundraising. The opposing campaign argued the measure was too far-reaching and cited its own polling in saying a majority of Arizonans support the 15-week limit. The measure allows post-viability abortions if they are necessary to protect the life or physical or mental health of the mother.
Access to abortion has been a cloudy issue in Arizona. In April, the state Supreme Court cleared the way for the enforcement of a long-dormant 1864 law banning nearly all abortions. The state Legislature swiftly repealed it.
Voters in Arizona are divided on abortion. Maddy Pennell, a junior at Arizona State University, said the possibility of a near-total abortion ban made her “depressed” and strengthened her desire to vote for the abortion ballot measure.
“I feel very strongly about having access to abortion,” she said.
Kyle Lee, an independent Arizona voter, does not support the abortion ballot measure.
“All abortion is pretty much, in my opinion, murder from beginning to end,” Lee said.
The Civil War-era ban also shaped the contours of tight legislative races. State Sen. Shawnna Bolick and state Rep. Matt Gress are among the handful of vulnerable Republican incumbents in competitive districts who crossed party lines to give the repeal vote the final push — a vote that will be tested as both parties vie for control of the narrowly GOP-held state Legislature.
Both of the Phoenix-area lawmakers were rebuked by some of their Republican colleagues for siding with Democrats. Gress made a motion on the House floor to initiate the repeal of the 1864 law. Bolick, explaining her repeal vote to her Senate colleagues, gave a 20-minute floor speech describing her three difficult pregnancies.
While Gress was first elected to his seat in 2022, Bolick is facing voters for the first time. She was appointed by the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors to fill a seat vacancy in 2023. She has not emphasized her role in the repeal vote as she has campaigned, instead playing up traditional conservative issues — one of her signs reads “Bolick Backs the Blue.”
Voters rejected a measure to eliminate retention elections for state Superior Court judges and Supreme Court justices.
The measure was put on the ballot by Republican legislators hoping to protect two conservative justices up for a routine retention vote who favored allowing the Civil War-era ban to be enforced — Shawnna Bolick’s husband, Supreme Court Justice Clint Bolick, and Justice Kathryn Hackett King. Since the measure did not pass, both are still vulnerable to voter ouster, though those races hadn’t been decided by early Wednesday morning.
Under the existing system, voters decide every four to six years whether judges and justices should remain on the bench. The proposed measure would have allowed the judges and justices to stay on the bench without a popular vote unless one is triggered by felony convictions, crimes involving fraud and dishonesty, personal bankruptcy or mortgage foreclosure.
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Nebraska voters supported a measure Tuesday that enshrines the state’s current ban on abortions after the 12th week of pregnancy in the state constitution, and they rejected a competing measure that sought to expand abortion rights. Nebraska was the first state to have competing abortion amendments on the same ballot since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, ending the nationwide right to abortion and allowing states to decide for themselves. The dueling measures were among a record number of petition-initiated measures on Nebraska’s ballot Tuesday.
What were the competing abortion measures?
A majority of voters supported a measure enshrining the state’s current ban on abortion after the first 12 weeks of pregnancy in the state constitution. The measure will also allow for further restrictions. Last year, the Legislature passed the 12-week ban, which includes exceptions for cases of rape and incest and to protect the life of the pregnant woman.
Voters rejected the other abortion measure. If they had passed it by a larger number of “for” votes than the 12-week measure, it would have amended the constitution to guarantee the right to have an abortion until viability — the standard under Roe that is the point at which a fetus might survive outside the womb. Some babies can survive with medical help after 21 weeks of gestation.
Abortion was on the ballot in several other states, as well. Coming into the election, voters in all seven states that had decided on abortion-related ballot measures since the reversal of Roe had favored abortion rights, including in some conservative states.
Who is behind the Nebraska abortion measures?
The 12-week ban measure was bankrolled by some of Nebraska’s wealthiest people, including Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts, who previously served as governor and donated more than $1.1 million. His mother, Marlene Ricketts, gave $4 million to the cause. Members of the Peed family, which owns publishing company Sandhills Global, also gave $1 million.
The effort was organized under the name Protect Women and Children and was heavily backed by religious organizations, including the Nebraska Catholic Conference, a lobbying group that has organized rallies, phone banks and community townhalls to drum up support for the measure.
The effort to enshrine viability as the standard was called Protect Our Rights Nebraska and had the backing of several medical, advocacy and social justice groups. Planned Parenthood donated nearly $1 million to the cause, with the American Civil Liberties Union, I Be Black Girl, Nebraska Appleseed and the Women’s Fund of Omaha also contributing significantly to the roughly $3.7 million raised by Protect Our Rights.
What other initiatives were on Nebraska’s ballot?
Nebraska voters approved two measures Tuesday that will create a system for the use and manufacture of medical marijuana, if the measures survive an ongoing legal challenge.
The measures legalize the possession and use of medical marijuana, and allow for the manufacture, distribution and delivery of the drug. One would let patients and caregivers possess up to 5 ounces (142 grams) of marijuana if recommended by a doctor. The other would create the Nebraska Medical Cannabis Commission, which would oversee the private groups that would manufacture and dispense the drug.
Those initiatives were challenged over allegations that the petition campaign that put them on the ballot broke election rules. Nebraska’s attorney general said supporters of the measures may have submitted several thousand invalid signatures, and one man has been charged in connection with 164 allegedly fraudulent signatures. That means a judge could still invalidate the measures.
Voters also opted Tuesday to repeal a new conservative-backed law that allocates millions of dollars in taxpayer money to fund private school tuition.
Finally, they approved a measure that will require all Nebraska employers to provide at least 40 hours of paid sick leave to their employees.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Voters in Missouri cleared the way to undo one of the nation’s most restrictive abortion bans in one of seven victories for abortion rights advocates, while Florida, Nebraska and South Dakota defeated similar constitutional amendments, leaving bans in place.
Abortion rights amendments also passed in Arizona, Colorado, Maryland and Montana. Nevada voters also approved an amendment, but they’ll need to pass it again it 2026 for it to take effect. Another that bans discrimination on the basis of “pregnancy outcomes” prevailed in New York.
The results include firsts for the abortion landscape, which underwent a seismic shift in 2022 when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, a ruling that ended a nationwide right to abortion and cleared the way for bans to take effect in most Republican-controlled states.
They also came in the same election that Republican Donald Trump won the presidency. Among his inconsistent positions on abortion has been an insistence that it’s an issue best left to the states. Still, the president can have a major impact on abortion policy through executive action.
In the meantime, Missouri is positioned to be the first state where a vote will undo a ban on abortion at all stages of pregnancy, with an amendment that would allow lawmakers to restrict abortions only past the point of a fetus’ viability — usually considered after 21 weeks, although there’s no exact defined time frame.
But the ban, and other restrictive laws, are not automatically repealed. Advocates now have to ask courts to overturn laws to square with the new amendment.
“Today, Missourians made history and sent a clear message: decisions around pregnancy, including abortion, birth control, and miscarriage care are personal and private and should be left up to patients and their families, not politicians,” Rachel Sweet, campaign manager of Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, said in a statement.
Roughly half of Missouri’s voters said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 2,200 of the state’s voters. But only about 1 in 10 said abortion should be illegal in all cases; nearly 4 in 10 said abortion should be illegal in most cases.
Bans remain in place in three states after votes
Florida, Nebraska and South Dakota became the first states since Roe was overturned where abortion opponents prevailed on a ballot measure. Most voters supported the Florida measure, but it fell short of the required 60% to pass constitutional amendments in the state. Most states require a simple majority.
The result was a political win for Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican with a national profile, who had steered state GOP funds to the cause. His administration has weighed in, too, with a campaign against the measure, investigators questioning people who signed petitions to add it to the ballot and threats to TV stations that aired one commercial supporting it.
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the national anti-abortion group SBA Pro-Life America, said in a statement that the result is “a momentous victory for life in Florida and for our entire country,” praising DeSantis for leading the charge against the measure.
The defeat makes permanent a shift in the Southern abortion landscape that began when the state’s six-week ban took effect in May. That removed Florida as a destination for abortion for many women from nearby states with deeper bans and also led to far more women from the state traveling to obtain abortion. The nearest states with looser restrictions are North Carolina and Virginia — hundreds of miles away.
“The reality is because of Florida’s constitution a minority of Florida voters have decided Amendment 4 will not be adopted,” said Lauren Brenzel, campaign director for the Yes on 4 Campaign said while wiping away tears. “The reality is a majority of Floridians just voted to end Florida’s abortion ban.”
In South Dakota, another state with a ban on abortion throughout pregnancy with some exceptions, the defeat of an abortion measure was more decisive. It would have allowed some regulations related to the health of the woman after 12 weeks. Because of that wrinkle, most national abortion-rights groups did not support it.
Voters in Nebraska adopted a measure that allows more abortion restrictions and enshrines the state’s current 12-week ban and rejected a competing measure that would have ensured abortion rights.
Other states guaranteed abortion rights
Arizona’s amendment will mean replacing the current law that bans abortion after the first 15 weeks of pregnancy. The new measure ensures abortion access until viability. A ballot measure there gained momentum after a state Supreme Court ruling in April found that the state could enforce a strict abortion ban adopted in 1864. Some GOP lawmakers joined with Democrats to repeal the law before it could be enforced.
In Maryland, the abortion rights amendment is a legal change that won’t make an immediate difference to abortion access in a state that already allows it.
It’s a similar situation in Montana, where abortion is already legal until viability.
The Colorado measure exceeded the 55% of support required to pass. Besides enshrining access, it also undoes an earlier amendment that barred using state and local government funding for abortion, opening the possibility of state Medicaid and government employee insurance plans covering care.
A New York equal rights law that abortion rights group say will bolster abortion rights also passed. It doesn’t contain the word “abortion” but rather bans discrimination on the basis of “pregnancy outcomes, and reproductive healthcare and autonomy.” Sasha Ahuja, campaign director of New Yorkers for Equal Rights, called the result “a monumental victory for all New Yorkers” and a vote against opponents who she says used misleading parental rights and anti-trans messages to thwart the measure.
The results end a win streak for abortion-rights advocates
Until Tuesday, abortion rights advocates had prevailed on all seven measures that have appeared on statewide ballots since the fall of Roe.
The abortion rights campaigns have a big fundraising advantage this year. Their opponents’ efforts are focused on portraying the amendments as too extreme rather than abortion as immoral.
Currently, 13 states are enforcing bans at all stages of pregnancy, with some exceptions. Four more bar abortion in most cases after about six weeks of pregnancy — before women often realize they’re pregnant. Despite the bans, the number of monthly abortions in the U.S. has risen slightly, because of the growing use of abortion pills and organized efforts to help women travel for abortion. Still, advocates say the bans have reduced access, especially for lower-income and minority residents of the states with bans.
The issue is resonating with voters. About one-fourth said abortion policy was the single most important factor for their vote, according to AP VoteCast, a sweeping survey of more than 110,000 voters nationwide. Close to half said it was an important factor, but not the most important. Just over 1 in 10 said it was a minor factor.
The outcomes of ballot initiatives that sought to overturn strict abortion bans in Florida and Missouri were very important to a majority of voters in the states. More than half of Florida voters identified the result of the amendment as very important, while roughly 6 in 10 of Missouri’s voters said the same, the survey found.
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Associated Press reporters Hannah Fingerhut and Amanda Seitz contributed to this article.
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This article has been corrected to reflect in the ‘other states’ section that Montana, not Missouri, currently allows abortion until viability.
