130 Facts About Brian Mulroney

Martin Brian Mulroney is a Canadian lawyer, businessman, and politician who served as the 18th prime minister of Canada from 1984 to 1993.

Brian Mulroney then moved to Montreal and gained prominence as a labour lawyer.

Brian Mulroney held that post until 1983, when he successfully became leader of the Progressive Conservatives.

Brian Mulroney then led the party to a landslide victory in the 1984 federal election, winning the second-largest percentage of seats in Canadian history and receiving over 50 percent of the popular vote.

Brian Mulroney sought Quebec's endorsement of the constitutional amendments twice by first introducing the Meech Lake Accord and then the Charlottetown Accord ; both failed to be ratified.

In foreign policy, Brian Mulroney strengthened Canada's ties with the United States and opposed the apartheid regime in South Africa, leading an effort within the Commonwealth to sanction the country.

Brian Mulroney's tenure was marked by the Air India Flight 182 bombing, the largest mass killing in Canadian history, though his response to the attack came under criticism.

Brian Mulroney made environmental protection a key focus by securing a treaty with the United States on acid rain, making Canada the first industrialized country to ratify the Convention on Biological Diversity, adding significant national parks, and passing the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act and the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.

Brian Mulroney has been criticized for his role in the resurgence of Quebec nationalism and accused of corruption in the Airbus affair, a scandal that would only gain prominence several years after he left office.

Brian Mulroney was born on March 20,1939, in Baie-Comeau, Quebec, a remote and isolated town in the eastern part of the province.

Brian Mulroney is the son of Irish Canadian Catholic parents, Mary Irene and Benedict Martin Mulroney, who was a paper mill electrician.

Benedict Brian Mulroney worked overtime and ran a repair business to earn extra money for his children's education, and he encouraged his oldest son to attend university.

Brian Mulroney would sing Irish songs for McCormick, and the publisher would slip him $50.

On May 26,1973, Brian Mulroney married Mila Pivnicki, the daughter of a Serbian-Canadian doctor, Dimitrije Mita Pivnicki, from Sarajevo.

Brian Mulroney is the Ontario's minister of transportation and minister of Francophone affairs.

Brian Mulroney entered St Francis Xavier University in the fall of 1955 as a 16-year-old freshman.

Brian Mulroney made other important, lasting friendships with Gerald Doucet, Fred Doucet, Sam Wakim, and Patrick MacAdam.

Brian Mulroney enthusiastically embraced political organization and assisted the local PC candidate in his successful 1956 Nova Scotia provincial election campaign; the PCs, led provincially by Robert Stanfield, won a surprise victory.

Brian Mulroney became a youth delegate and attended the 1956 leadership convention in Ottawa.

Brian Mulroney joined the Youth for Diefenbaker committee, which was led by Ted Rogers, a future scion of Canadian business.

Brian Mulroney struck an early friendship with Diefenbaker and received telephone calls from him.

Brian Mulroney won several public speaking contests at St Francis Xavier University, was a star member of the school's debating team and never lost an interuniversity debate.

Brian Mulroney was very active in campus politics, serving with distinction in several Model Parliaments, and was campus prime minister in a Maritimes-wide Model Parliament in 1958.

Brian Mulroney assisted with the 1958 national election campaign at the local level in Nova Scotia, a campaign that led to the largest majority in history of the Canadian House of Commons.

Brian Mulroney neglected his studies, fell seriously ill during the winter term, was hospitalized, and, despite getting extensions for several courses because of his illness, left his program at Dalhousie after the first year.

Brian Mulroney then applied to Universite Laval in Quebec City and restarted first-year law there the next year.

In Quebec City, Brian Mulroney befriended future Quebec Premier Daniel Johnson Sr, and frequented the provincial legislature, making connections with politicians, aides, and journalists.

At Laval, Brian Mulroney built a network of friends, including Lucien Bouchard, Bernard Roy, Michel Cogger, Michael Meighen, and Jean Bazin, that would play a prominent role in Canadian politics for years to come.

Brian Mulroney secured a temporary appointment in Ottawa during the summer of 1962, as the executive assistant to Alvin Hamilton, minister of agriculture.

Brian Mulroney twice failed his bar exams, but the firm kept him due to his charming personality.

Brian Mulroney was noted for ending several strikes along the Montreal waterfront where he met fellow lawyer W David Angus of Stikeman Elliott, who would later become a valuable fundraiser for his campaigns.

Brian Mulroney joined with most of his generation in supporting Camp and opposing Diefenbaker, but due to his past friendship with Diefenbaker, he attempted to stay out of the spotlight.

Once Fulton dropped off the ballot, Brian Mulroney helped in swinging most of his organization over to Robert Stanfield, who won.

The committee's proceedings, which showed Mafia infiltration of the unions, made Brian Mulroney well known in Quebec, as the hearings were extensively covered in the media.

Brian Mulroney had played the lead role in recruiting Wagner to the PC party a few years earlier, and the two wound up as rivals for Quebec delegates, most of whom were snared by Wagner, who even blocked Brian Mulroney from becoming a voting delegate at the convention.

At the 1976 leadership convention, Brian Mulroney placed second on the first ballot behind Wagner.

Brian Mulroney was the only one of the eleven leadership candidates who did not provide full financial disclosure on his campaign expenses, and his campaign finished deeply in debt.

Brian Mulroney took the job of executive vice president of the Iron Ore Company of Canada, a joint subsidiary of three major US steel corporations.

In 1983 Brian Mulroney successfully negotiated the closing of the Schefferville mine, winning a generous settlement for the affected workers.

Brian Mulroney maintained and expanded his extensive political networking among business leaders and conservatives across the country.

Brian Mulroney declined an offer to run in a Quebec by-election as a federal Liberal.

Clark's key Quebec organizer Rodrigue Pageau was in fact a double agent, working for Brian Mulroney, undermining Clark's support.

Brian Mulroney had been criticized in 1976 for lacking policy depth and substance, a weakness he addressed by making several major speeches across the country in the early 1980s, which were collected into a book, Where I Stand, published in 1983.

Brian Mulroney avoided most of the flash of his earlier campaign, for which he had been criticized.

Brian Mulroney was elected party leader on June 11,1983, beating Clark on the fourth ballot, attracting broad support from the many factions of the party and especially from representatives of his native Quebec.

Patrick Martin noted that a poll of delegates on the final ballot showed that Brian Mulroney had won a bare majority of Clark's home province of Alberta, and that Clark had won a bare majority in Brian Mulroney's home province of Quebec.

However it was Brian Mulroney's strong showing amongst Ontario delegates that seemed to account for most of his margin of victory.

Two months later, Brian Mulroney entered Parliament as the MP for Central Nova in Nova Scotia, winning a by-election in what was then considered a safe Tory seat, after Elmer MacKay stood aside in his favour.

However, Brian Mulroney successfully turned the tables by pointing to the recent raft of Liberal patronage appointments.

Brian Mulroney yielded Central Nova back to MacKay and instead ran in the eastern Quebec riding of Manicouagan, which included Baie-Comeau.

Brian Mulroney had wide discretion to take Canada in virtually any direction he wanted.

Brian Mulroney's support was based on a grand coalition of socially conservative populists from the West, Quebec nationalists, and fiscal conservatives from Ontario and Atlantic Canada.

Brian Mulroney included a large number of Westerners in his Cabinet.

Brian Mulroney received death threats for exerting pressure on Manitoba over French language rights.

Brian Mulroney's government cut spending for unemployment insurance and reduced the range of workers covered by the benefits from the program.

In 1985, Brian Mulroney's government introduced a four-year plan to restructure family benefits.

Brian Mulroney's government reduced the federal work force by 1 percent each year from 1986 to 1991, resulting in the laying off of 11,000 federal employees.

Brian Mulroney's government transferred the costs of universal health care and higher education to the provinces, breaking tradition of the two levels of government splitting the costs.

Brian Mulroney's government eliminated subsidies to government-owned passenger rail and postal services, resulting in the closing of post offices in some small towns and the elimination of certain train routes.

Under Brian Mulroney, military spending growth was reduced to 1.5 percent per year and foreign aid growth was reduced to 3 percent per year.

One of Brian Mulroney's priorities was to lower the deficit, which had increased from $667 million under Prime Minister Lester Pearson to $37.2 billion under Trudeau.

Brian Mulroney's government slashed spending, de-indexed personal income tax brackets, and eliminated open corporate tax loopholes.

In 1988, Brian Mulroney's government reduced the corporate income tax from 36 percent to 28 percent.

Brian Mulroney's government passed a major tax reform bill, Bill C-139, which was made effective on January 1,1988.

Brian Mulroney used Section 26, a little known Constitutional provision, allowing him in an emergency situation to ask the Queen to appoint eight new Senators.

On September 27,1990, at the Queen's approval, Brian Mulroney added the eight new Senators, thus giving the Tories their first majority in the Senate in nearly 50 years.

Under Brian Mulroney, it sold off 23 of them, including Air Canada, which was completely privatized by 1989, although the Air Canada Public Participation Act continued to make certain requirements of the airline.

Brian Mulroney's government privatized Connaught Laboratories in 1984 through two public issues and Petro-Canada in 1991.

On June 1,1985, Brian Mulroney's government negotiated the Western Accord on Energy with the governments of the oil-producing provinces.

Brian Mulroney's government added eight new national parks, and passed the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act and Canadian Environmental Protection Act.

In 1987, Brian Mulroney hosted an international climate conference in Montreal, Quebec.

Negotiations began in 1986 when Brian Mulroney first discussed the issue with then-president Ronald Reagan.

Brian Mulroney repeatedly pressed the issue in public meetings with Reagan in 1987 and 1988.

Under Brian Mulroney, Canada became the first industrialized country to ratify the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

At the convention, Brian Mulroney pledged $260 million from Canada towards advancing sustainable development for developing nations; this included an offer to forgive $145 million in debts owed to Canada by Latin American nations on the condition that the sum of money be used for sustainable development and social programs.

Brian Mulroney's government introduced the Northern Cod Adjustment and Recovery Program that provided unemployment insurance payments and retraining to workers; most of the workers viewed this as insufficient.

On September 22,1988, Brian Mulroney issued an official apology on behalf of the Canadian government for Japanese Canadian internment during World War II.

Brian Mulroney's government provided a 300 million dollar compensation package which included $21,000 to each of the remaining 13,000 survivors, $12 million for a Japanese community fund, and $24 million to create a Canadian race relations foundation.

On issues of abortion, Brian Mulroney declared he was opposed to "abortion on demand", but gave no details on what that meant legally.

In Spring 1988, the Brian Mulroney government offered a compromise solution that would give easy access to abortion in the early stages of pregnancy and criminalize late-term ones.

Brian Mulroney wanted Quebec to endorse the constitution and wanted to include Quebec in a new agreement with the rest of Canada.

Brian Mulroney called a First Ministers' conference with the ten provincial premiers for April 30,1987, at Willson House, located on the shores of Meech Lake, Quebec, in the Gatineau Hills.

At a final roll call at 4:45 am on June 3,1987, hours before the signing ceremony, Brian Mulroney knowingly breached convention by taking the vote in reverse order around the table instead of the traditional order of a province's entry into confederation.

Brian Mulroney reportedly demanded Bouchard clarify the remark or resign, and Bouchard supplied a lengthy letter of resignation on May 22,1990.

Brian Mulroney appointed his foreign minister, Joe Clark, as the first minister responsible for constitutional affairs on April 21,1991.

Brian Mulroney's government appointed two Quebec bodies and two national bodies to engage in discussions regarding constitutional reform.

Brian Mulroney established a close relationship with US President Ronald Reagan.

Brian Mulroney sent a letter of condolence to Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, sparking an uproar in Canada, since he did not call families of the actual victims to offer condolences.

In November 1984, Brian Mulroney sent his newly-appointed Canadian ambassador to the United Nations, Stephen Lewis, to the Headquarters of the United Nations in New York City to persuade the General Assembly to take action against the ongoing Ethiopian famine.

Brian Mulroney's government spent tens of millions of dollars to match private donations to combat the famine.

Brian Mulroney supported the United Nations coalition during the 1991 Gulf War and when the UN authorized full use of force in the operation, Canada sent a CF-18 squadron with support personnel and a field hospital to deal with casualties from the ground war as well as a company of The Royal Canadian Regiment to safeguard these ground elements.

At an October 23,1985, United Nations General Assembly meeting, Brian Mulroney stated, "if there is no progress in the dismantling of apartheid, [Canada]'s relations with South Africa may have to be severed completely"; he restored this line in his speech after he originally removed it at the advice of External Affairs.

Critics noted that Brian Mulroney had originally professed opposition to free trade during the 1983 leadership campaign though the 1985 report of the MacDonald Commission suggested free trade as an idea to him.

Also on November 21, Brian Mulroney made a controversial Order in Council which allowed the establishment of the AMEX Bank of Canada, despite Finance Minister Michael Wilson rejecting AMEX's application to open a Canadian bank in 1986.

On February 24,1993, Brian Mulroney announced his intention to resign as prime minister and retire from politics.

On June 13,1993, Brian Mulroney was replaced as leader of the Progressive Conservatives by Defence Minister Kim Campbell.

On June 25,1993, Brian Mulroney resigned as prime minister and chose not to run for reelection at the Commons.

Brian Mulroney claimed he was not responsible for the obliteration of the PCs, and instead blamed Campbell and her relationship with her boyfriend.

Since leaving office, Brian Mulroney has served as an international business consultant and remains a partner with the law firm Norton Rose.

Brian Mulroney currently sits on the board of directors of multiple corporations, including The Blackstone Group, Barrick Gold, Quebecor Inc.

Brian Mulroney is chairman of various international advisory boards and councils for many international companies, including Power Corp.

In 1998, Brian Mulroney was accorded Canada's highest civilian honour when he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada.

In 2003, Brian Mulroney received the Woodrow Wilson Award for Public Service from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars of the Smithsonian Institution at a ceremony in Montreal.

In January 2004, Brian Mulroney delivered a keynote speech in Washington, DC, celebrating the tenth anniversary of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

In June 2004, Brian Mulroney presented a eulogy for former US President Ronald Reagan during the latter's state funeral.

Two years later, at the request of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Brian Mulroney travelled to Washington, DC, along with Michael Wilson, Canada's ambassador to the United States, as Canada's representatives at the state funeral of former president Gerald Ford.

Brian Mulroney's doctors performed a biopsy, which ruled out cancer.

Brian Mulroney recovered well enough to tape a speech for the Conservative Party of Canada's 2005 Policy Convention in Montreal in March, though he could not attend in person.

Brian Mulroney later developed pancreatitis and he remained in hospital for several weeks.

In 2014, Brian Mulroney became the chairman of Quebecor and defused tensions resulting from the continuing influence of former President and CEO Pierre Karl Peladeau.

On September 29,1995, the Canadian Department of Justice, acting on behalf of the RCMP, sent a Letter of Request to the Swiss Government asking for information related to allegations that Brian Mulroney was involved in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the Government of Canada.

On January 5,1997, Brian Mulroney agreed to an out-of-court settlement with the Government of Canada and the RCMP.

The Oliphant Commission Report in 2010 stated that Brian Mulroney accepted $225 000 from Schreiber, and former justice minister Allan Rock said he would have used a different litigation strategy in this case had he known about these payments.

Brian Mulroney played an influential role by supporting the merger of the Canadian Alliance, and the Progressive Conservatives.

Brian Mulroney joined the Conservative Party of Canada following its creation in 2003 by the merger of the Progressive Conservatives and the Alliance.

In early 2009, Brian Mulroney "called a high-ranking person in the party and asked that his name be removed from all party lists" due to his anger at the continued inquiry into his financial affairs, although he denies this claim.

Months before the 2015 federal election, Brian Mulroney endorsed Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Brian Mulroney campaigned for Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole in the run-up of the 2021 Canadian election.

Just a month and a bit later, Brian Mulroney criticized him on the matter of COVID-19 vaccinations, stating that he should show 'leadership' and expel unvaccinated MPs from the Conservative caucus.

In October 2022, Brian Mulroney said he supported the Conservatives' new leader, Pierre Poilievre, but urged him to move closer to the political centre.

Brian Mulroney criticizes Pierre Elliot Trudeau for avoiding military service in World War II, and favourably references sources that describe the young Trudeau as holding anti-Semitic nationalist views and having an admiration for fascist dictators.

Brian Mulroney makes the case that his once-radical policies on the economy and free trade were not reversed by subsequent governments, and regards this as vindication.

Brian Mulroney argues his government's economic policies helped the subsequent government eliminate the deficit.

Brian Mulroney's government had flirted with 10 percent approval ratings in the early 1990s, when Mulroney's honesty and intentions were frequently questioned in the media, by Canadians in general and by his political colleagues.

Campbell claimed Brian Mulroney knew the Tories would be defeated regardless of who led them into the election and wanted a "scapegoat who would bear the burden of his unpopularity" rather than a true successor.

In 2006, Brian Mulroney was named the "greenest" Prime Minister in Canadian history by a 12-member panel at an event organized by Corporate Knights magazine.

Former Bloc Quebecois leader Michel Gauthier considered Brian Mulroney to be the greatest Prime Minister of the last 50 years.

Brian Mulroney was appointed a Companion of the Order of Canada on May 6,1998.

Brian Mulroney's accomplishments include, among others, the signing of the Free Trade Agreement with the United States, the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and the United States, and the Acid Rain Treaty.

In 2018 Brian Mulroney was inducted into the Canadian Disability Hall of Fame and was awarded the George Bush Award for Excellence in Public Service.