Brian Mulroney - Canadian History.

« At the party convention Mulroney was one of the candidates who ran against Clark.

This time Mulroney did not have to contend with a rival candidate from Québec.

Healso had the support of the remnants of the Diefenbaker faction—who disliked Clark even more than they disliked Mulroney.

Mulroney was also endorsed by asubstantial group of members of Parliament; this endorsement helped allay concerns about whether he could provide effective leadership in Parliament.

Mulroney waselected leader of the Conservatives on the fourth ballot. In August 1983 Mulroney won a seat in Parliament, and he proved an effective opposition leader.

In June 1984 Pierre Trudeau, the Liberal prime minister, retired, andthe Liberals chose John Turner as his successor.

Turner called an election for September.

Mulroney performed well in nationally televised debates with Turner andEdward Broadbent, the leader of the New Democratic Party (NDP).

He also won the support of French Canadian nationalists in Québec ( see French Canadian Nationalism), and he was supported by other Canadians who were dissatisfied with the Liberal Party, which had been in office for all but nine months of the previous 21years.

The Conservatives won resoundingly in the parliamentary election, taking a record 211 of 282 seats and a majority in every province.

Mulroney was reelected tohis seat, and in September 1984 he became Canada’s 18th prime minister. IV FIRST TERM AS PRIME MINISTER Mulroney and his Cabinet had little chance to capitalize on their popularity because they needed to address the huge national debt and Canada’s crippled economy.Since 1974 the government had been operating with a budget deficit each year, spending more money than it was collecting.

By 1984 the deficits had accumulated topush the national debt to nearly 50 percent of all the goods and services Canada produced.

The government had been borrowing money to cover its deficits, and annualinterest payments on the debt accounted for some 30 percent of all the revenues the government collected.

In an effort to resolve these problems, Mulroney’sgovernment raised taxes and cut spending.

Even then, however, the deficit did not shrink appreciably. Mulroney also had difficulty managing the broad national base of supporters that had provided the Conservatives with their landslide victory.

People in the four westernprovinces (British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba) had voted out the Liberals because they felt the Liberal government had favored Québec concernsover western interests.

Mulroney gave the western provinces strong representation in his cabinet and adopted a posture of responsiveness to western concerns.

He alsoended the Liberals’ national energy policy, which had been considered bad for western oil and gas interests.

However, in 1986 Mulroney’s government decided to shiftthe maintenance contract for the government’s CF-18 fighter aircraft from Manitoba to Québec, and the decision provoked an angry response in western Canada. At the other end of the country, in the economically poorer Atlantic provinces (Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick), theelectorate was disappointed for another reason.

Mulroney had promised to increase spending for social programs in the Atlantic provinces, but the government’sfinancial problems left it unable to fulfill that promise.

In fact, the government had to cut spending on existing programs. The government was also battered from 1985 to 1987 by allegations that certain Cabinet ministers had granted inappropriate political favors or were guilty ofmisconduct.

Several ministers were forced out of office, while the reputations of others were seriously damaged.

The public criticized Mulroney, linking his Cabinet’smissteps to his own faults.

The media and members of Parliament accused him of failing to provide clear direction to the government, of centralizing power in the handsof an incompetent personal staff, and of indulging his large network of political friends with favors.

His critics accused him of breaking his promises and evadingresponsibility for the conduct of his ministers.

Only 18 months after the election, the Mulroney government’s popularity had slipped so badly that the Conservatives fellbehind the Liberals in voter preference polls. In 1987 reelection of the Conservatives appeared unlikely, but support for Mulroney and his party had begun to resurge by the spring of 1988.

Mulroney and hisgovernment were helped first by the steady improvement of the economy—an improvement they claimed was the result of Conservative policies.

Mulroney and hisCabinet had instituted tax reforms and had reduced government involvement in the economy, a process that included privatizing government-owned corporations andderegulating some industries and businesses.

They said these measures encouraged investment in businesses. Another factor in Mulroney’s favor was his successful negotiation in 1987 of the Meech Lake Accord.

In 1982 Canada had revised the Constitution of Canada, butQuébec refused to approve it.

The Meech Lake Accord was an agreement with the ten provincial premiers to amend the constitution so it would be acceptable toQuébec.

The accord strengthened Mulroney’s support in Québec.

It also enhanced his national prestige by appearing to end a conflict that centered on Québec’spossible secession from the confederation. The decisive factor that swung popularity back to Mulroney’s government was its success in negotiating the Canadian-U.S.

Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in 1988.

TheFTA was designed to abolish all tariffs between the two countries by 1998.

Many Canadian nationalists opposed the FTA.

They argued that it would weaken Canada’sability to set its own economic, social, and cultural policies, and ultimately threaten the country’s independence.

Mulroney claimed the FTA would provide Canada withsecure access to the American market, make Canadian business more competitive, and provide for easier settlement of trade disputes between the two countries. During the 1988 election campaign, the FTA was a major issue.

The Liberal Party was divided over it, and many prominent Liberals publicly supported the agreement.This disagreement compounded other internal divisions among the Liberals that weakened the authority and public standing of the party leader, John Turner.

In theparliamentary election the Conservatives lost their majorities in the four Atlantic provinces, as well as in British Columbia and Saskatchewan, but they won a nationalmajority with 169 of 295 seats (benefiting from the support of voters in the big provinces of Ontario and Québec). V SECOND TERM AS PRIME MINISTER In his second term as prime minister, Mulroney suffered an unrelieved series of problems that led to his political demise.

The economy had a downturn, which pollsshowed many people blamed on the FTA.

In 1989 the Conservative government lost additional popularity when it approved the Goods and Services Tax (GST), a broadsales tax that was slated to replace in 1991 a tax charged only on manufactured goods.

Because the old tax had not been charged directly to consumers, it had beenhidden from them.

Opposition to the GST was particularly strong in Alberta, where there was no provincial sales tax.

Many Alberta Conservatives defected and joinedthe Reform Party (now part of the Canadian Alliance), a populist conservative party founded in 1987. The most serious blow to the Mulroney government was the unraveling of support for the Meech Lake Accord during the summer of 1989.

Critics persistently attackedthe agreement, arguing that it would weaken the federal system by granting too much power to the government of Québec and would violate the principle of equalityamong the provinces.

Many members of Canada’s First Nations vehemently opposed the agreement because it failed to address aboriginal rights.

Mulroney made avaliant effort to save the Meech Lake Accord through a new round of constitutional negotiations in the spring of 1990, but Manitoba and Newfoundland and Labrador didnot ratify it that June.

As a result, the accord failed. Even before the agreement failed, Mulroney’s senior Québec minister, Lucien Bouchard, and two other Conservative members of Parliament had resigned from the partyto protest Mulroney’s willingness to renegotiate the accord’s terms.

When the agreement failed, they formed a new party, the Bloc Québécois, to support Québec’sseparation from Canada.

The Bloc quickly gained support in Québec.

Even moderate nationalists were upset because they saw the defeat of the Meech Lake Accord asEnglish Canada rejecting Québec’s claim of distinctiveness as a French-speaking province.

Québec’s Liberal premier Robert Bourassa warned the federal governmentthat by 1992 the provincial government would hold a referendum on Québec’s status in the confederation.

Faced with this ultimatum, Mulroney initiated a new round ofconstitutional negotiations, which resulted in the Charlottetown Accord.. »