.

Gray MacDonald

First, a happy memory. Policy founding Editor and Publisher L. Ian MacDonald — now publisher emeritus — has been a close friend of the former prime minister dating back to their days in Montreal when Ian was a young political columnist and Mulroney was a rising-star lawyer. Ian wrote a bestselling biography published after the 1984 landslide, Mulroney: The Making of the Prime Minister, and became Mulroney's PMO speechwriter in 1985. Over the past decade in Policy, the two have conversed regularly on history, politics, family and the future. Here is the most recent of those Q&As: Brian Mulroney on Free Trade, Minority Rights, and 'Ain't Life Grand?'

From longtime friend and advisor Charley McMillan, we have a biographical tour d'horizon, from Baie Comeau to Laval to 24 Sussex. "For Brian, the goal was a big-tent party, not an ideological club with exclusionary boundaries," writes McMillan of Mulroney's leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party. "That meant recruiting staff, candidates, and supporters from a diverse talent pool across Canada, and building a secure political party base in Quebec and French Canadians living outside Quebec." Here's Brian Mulroney: a Canadian Life.

From Historica Canada President and former Maclean's editor Anthony Wilson-Smith, Above All, a Transcendent Talent for Friendship. "Mulroney was most beloved and trusted by those who knew him best," writes Wilson-Smith. "His friends, who drew a protective circle around him, could be found across the country and beyond."

From Policy contributor, United Nations Ambassador, and former Ontario Premier Bob Rae, Brian Mulroney Dared Greatly. "Brian’s ability to connect extended to my family," writes Rae, "my mother, whom he phoned when my Dad died; my wife, Arlene, whom he charmed so completely at official dinners that it took time and effort to deprogram her, never entirely successfully."

From Contributing Writer Jeremy Kinsman, former ambassador to the EU and Italy and high commissioner in London, whom Mulroney appointed Canada's man in Moscow, Brian Mulroney, a Canadian Leader of International Consequence. "Mulroney had things to say to his peers," writes Kinsman, "and some were harsh when necessary, as on the necessity of crushing apartheid."

From Derek Burney, who served as Mulroney's chief of staff during the negotiations on the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement (FTA) and later as Ambassador to the United States, 'How Will it Play in Drumheller?' Brian Mulroney and Free Trade. "With Brian Mulroney’s second majority win in 1988," writes Burney, "the negative stigma associated with free trade in Canada mostly disappeared."

Nelson Mandela arriving in Ottawa, June, 1990/Bill McCarthy

From Policy Editor Lisa Van Dusen, a look at Mulroney's approach to human rights at a time when his fight for Nelson Mandela's freedom seems all the more remarkable in retrospect. "At a moment in history when human rights are being degraded globally, Mulroney’s record on the inviolability of these basic, universal principles of human rights is well worth recalling." writes Van Dusen. Here's Mulroney and Human Rights: When Power Met Principle.

From Policy Contributing Writer and Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, a testimonial from one of the many Unlikely Friends of Brian, i.e. those who began at odds with the former prime minister and ended up the opposite. Here's An Environmentalist Misses Brian Mulroney, All Over Again. "That I should even have been remotely acquainted with Brian Mulroney was a long shot," writes May. "To have become a friend, and to love him as a friend, was beyond long odds."

From Contributing Writer Colin Robertson, a reminiscence about that night in Tinseltown when it was just like having his own agent. Here's With Mulroney in Hollywood: A Lesson in Diplomacy from the Great Networker. "We moved to the dining room, where Mulroney took his place beside the host in the receiving line," writes Robertson. "When I moved towards the cocktails, he grabbed my arm and said, 'You stand beside me…these are people you want to meet…bring lots of cards?' I had."

From Thomas D'aquino, longtime president of the Business Council on National Issues (forerunner of today's Business Council of Canada), Brian Mulroney, Canadian Business and Nation Building. "The prime minister’s passionate pursuit of national unity was beyond admirable," writes d'Aquino, "and while timing and politics had other plans, we never regretted joining forces with him in support of such a worthy cause."

From Kevin Lynch and Paul Deegan, an exploration of why Mulroney, from free trade to the GST to ending apartheid, was a transformative prime minister. "How did an electrician’s son from the paper-mill town of Baie-Comeau become so consequential at home and abroad?" ask Lynch and Deegan. "The answer is obvious: long-termism." Here's Mulroney Was a Transformative Leader.

Brian and Mila Mulroney in 1990/Bill McCarthy

From Policy Contributing Writer and Earnscliffe Principal Geoff Norquay, who served as Mulroney's senior policy advisor, a look at the late prime minister's leadership style. "He regretted his failures, but not his attempts to succeed against all odds in building a stronger Canada," writes Norquay. "As he told the graduating class at McGill University in 2017, 'Life is an unending sequence of challenges from which no one emerges unscathed. Defeat is not something to fear, but surrender is something to reject'." Here's A Larger-than-Life Leader.

From longtime Liberal pollster Martin Goldfarb, a lovely piece about another unlikely friendship, Mulroney's political and policy legacy, and a memorable lunch at the Toronto Club. "When we sat down, he whispered that neither of us — he Irish Catholic and me Jewish — would have been allowed in the club a generation earlier," writes Goldfarb. "We reminisced, we talked about our kids and grandkids, and we laughed. It was a wonderful, deep, engaging discussion that I will never forget." Here's Farewell to a Leader of Big, Bold Ideas.

And, last but by no means least, from our regular Policy columnist Don Newman, Mulroney's Passing and the Progressive Conservative Dream. "As long as he was alive," writes Newman, "he was the symbol of what the Progressive Conservative Party had been."

A moment of solitude at Calgary airport/Bill McCarthy

We highly recommend our gallery of images from former PMO official photographer Bill McCarthy, who spent five years as a constant presence in the lives of the prime minister and his family. Here's The Mulroney Years in Pictures. It includes the one above, which looks like an Andrew Wyeth painting, taken while he was waiting for his wife, Mila, at Calgary airport. "He looked around and said something like, 'You know, I think I'd like to go for a walk, on my own,'" recalls McCarthy. "He turned to the Mountie bodyguard and asked, 'Would that be okay, if I went on my own'? It was very sweet, as it was one of the only times I ever saw him off on his own." The gallery also includes some more recent shots from current PMO photographer, Adam Scotti, who happens to be Billy's son. Thanks so much to both for sharing their wonderful work with our readers.

And many thanks to our contributors for their fantastic pieces, to the former prime minister for his friendship and support of Policy and The Week in Policy over the past decade, and again, our deepest condolences to the Mulroney family.

Your Policy Links: Sadly, Still Timely



With Benjamin Netanyahu leveraging his government's bombing of Gaza in retaliation for the Hamas massacres of last October 7th for political and geopolitical aims and a UN cease-fire resolution failing at press time, the status quo of the conflict has remained tragically static since the above cover package was published in late December. We highly recommend a first read if you haven't jumped in yet, or a second look if you have. A thoughtful collection of must-read pieces from voices across the spectrum of perspectives, our Is Peace Possible? package provides both context and insight at a time of security chaos in the region and collateral political chaos elsewhere. Here's your handy Policy Online digest of the package. In other Policy links on the crisis, my March, 2023, piece, Benjamin Netanyahu and the War on Democracy. And, from May, 2021, Netanyahu's No-State Solution and the Provocations of Peace.

Policy contributors Jeremy Kinsman and Louise Blais have teamed up with longtime senior Liberal advisor Peter Denolo for the new Open Canada podcast Red Passport — our many readers who hold or have held one (including yours truly) will get that reference. Here's the latest episode, Trump, Elections, Haiti, and what it Means for Canada.

BMO chief economist and Policy contributor Doug Porter's Talking Points Memo this week is, Reddit or Not, Here Come Rate Cuts, with all the latest Kremlinology on the world's central banks, including Canada's.

Visit us at Policy Online, where you'll find all our posted print issues, plus our Policy Specials, Online Columns, Online Analysis, Book Reviews, and Verbatim sections.

Democracy Watch: Context is Everything


Political Meme of the Year/2016

In these days of performative propaganda and tactically contrived narratives, we've come to value the clarifying element of context more than ever, pining amid our absence-fuelled fondness like American voters longing for less preposterous days. With the 2024 presidential campaign undergoing a conflation trend whereby the standing of an octogenarian but sane and competent incumbent president is being equated with his twice-impeached, divisive, mendacious, coup plotting, treasonous, bellicose opponent, we just wanted to remind our readers that this electoral disenchantment is not unprecedented. The 2016 presidential campaign, of course, was so off-putting, dispiriting, cynical, hypertactical and unwittingly discrediting to democracy that it introduced the term "double-haters", inspired the American Dialect Society to declare "dumpster fire" the word of the year and produced headlines such as FiveThirtyEight's Americans' Distaste for Both Trump and Clinton is Record-Breaking. The 2020 campaign did not produce the same effect, or as a recent Bloomberg piece put it, "In 2020, to the frustration of Trump’s campaign strategists, Biden wasn’t viewed as particularly objectionable, even by many conservative Republicans." Of course, four years ago, the incumbent in that race was widely seen to be non compos mentis and Joe Biden was four years younger and unburdened by the millstone of the world's strongest economy (sound effect of "It's the economy, stupid" being flushed from conventional wisdom, reasons TBD). On the other hand, the Democratic candidate's age was not a factor at all in the 2016 dumpster fire, so Trump might be isolated as the sole culprit in voter revulsion, if only he hadn't actually won. It's complicated.




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Political Culture: Le Boxeur


Soazig de la Moissonnière

We have no idea what it is with politicians and boxing. First, Justin Trudeau boxed Patrick Brazeau in 2012, then Mitt Romney boxed Evander Holeyfield in 2015 (yeah, that happened), and now, French President Emmanuel Macron has released photos of himself boxing a punching bag that may or may not be a stand-in for Vladimir Putin. Here's CNN with Emmanuel Macron shows off his boxing skills, sparking mixed reaction in France.

Books: Shape Shifters


Quill & Quire

The shortlist for this year's Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing were announced Wednesday. The $25,000 prize, established in memory of the beloved Liberal MP who died on the floor of the House of Commons of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1998, is awarded annually by the Writers’ Trust of Canada. It honours books of literary merit that "have the potential to shape Canadians’ thinking on political life." This year's finalists are:

• Not Here: Why American Democracy Is Eroding and How Canada Can Protect Itself by Rob Goodman (Simon & Schuster Canada)
• Indictment: The Criminal Justice System on Trial by Benjamin Perrin (Aevo UTP)
• Canada: Beyond Grudges, Grievances, and Disunity by Donald J. Savoie (McGill-Queen’s University Press)
• The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together as Things Fall Apart by Astra Taylor (House of Anansi Press)
• Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast by John Vaillant (Knopf Canada)

You can read our Policy review of Fire Weather, written jointly by Green Party Leader Elizabeth May and John Kidder, and reviewed jointly with the 2023 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize winner, Chris Turner's How to Be a Climate Optimist. Here's Summer Reading on Hope and Fire.