Mulroney’s death underscores our shared humanity
Benns' Belief
Roderick Benns is the publisher of The Advocate. An award-winning author and journalist who grew up in Lindsay, he has written several books including Basic Income: How a Canadian Movement Could Change the World.
It is not uncommon to have a soft spot for the Canadian prime minister who was in power during one’s “growing up” years. For me, that was Brian Mulroney. Age wise for Mulroney, it was the summer of his life. He had just won a thrilling second election as I was leaving high school in 1988.
Since his death and recent state funeral, most news outlets are rightly pointing out the consequential policies Mulroney oversaw, from a North American free trade arrangement to replacing the old Manufacturers Sales Tax (MST) with a GST instead. Every economist said the GST was the right thing to do. Every Canadian hated it.
But it wasn’t Mulroney’s tackling of formidable economic questions that made me proud to be a Canadian. (The non-partisan me of today, in fact, isn’t a fan of the increased corporatism that came along with free trade.)
No, back then and right up until this moment, the thing I loved most about Mulroney was his uncommon humanity.
In his first year in power, he tackled the devastating famine in Ethiopia head on. With the help of the eloquent social democrat, Stephen Lewis, who served as Canada’s ambassador to the U.N., and the able and decent Joe Clark, Mulroney’s foreign affairs minister, Canada’s leadership in getting aid to the drought-stricken nation was swift and effective.
Two years later I remember when 155 Sri Lankans were picked up at sea and given refugee status. As it turned out, they had invented a tale of being adrift in the north Atlantic for five days in crowded lifeboats to gain sanctuary in this country. It was advice someone had given them to enter Canada; they said they regretted it and asked Canadians for forgiveness.
It would have been easy to play the strongarm Conservative leader here and send them packing. Instead, Mulroney resisted calls to do so, saying his government was “not in the business of turning away refugees.”
“If we err, we err on the side of fairness and compassion,” he said.
Similarly, Mulroney was on the right side of history when it came to pushing for the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa and leading the way in the west on recognizing Ukrainian independence.
After he left politics, his autumn years were spent collecting awards or receiving honours, such as ‘greenest PM’ in Canadian history or helping to launch the Brian Mulroney Institute of Government at St. Francis Xavier University.
During these years he also wrote the foreword to my historical fiction book about a teenage John A. Macdonald, and for that I am forever grateful.
In the late winter of his life one of his final public comments was to pay homage to his longtime political adversary, Ed Broadbent, who had died just weeks before Mulroney would. He said Canadians should remember Ed Broadbent “with respect, affection and admiration.”
One could say the same about Canada’s 18th prime minister.
