Brian Mulroney and Mikhail Gorbachev in Ottawa, May, 1990/Bill McCarthy

By Kevin Lynch and Paul Deegan

March 5, 2024

Of all the adjectives used to describe Brian Mulroney’s tenure as prime minister of Canada, two stand out: transformative and consequential. The lesson to all leaders who want to build a lasting legacy — whether in politics, business, or any pursuit — is that you can’t be the latter without being the former. How did an electrician’s son from the paper-mill town of Baie-Comeau become so consequential at home and abroad? The answer is obvious: long-termism.

Mulroney’s long-termism may have come from his parents. His father was a hard-working man who held a day job at the paper mill — owned by Chicago Tribune Publisher Col. Robert McCormick — and took on other odd jobs at night to support six kids. When young Brian saw that the family was still struggling to make ends meet, he offered to quit school and enter the apprenticeship program at the mill. But his dad had a different vision of the future, saying, “The only way out of a papermill town is through a university door.” That’s long-termism in spades.

Politics in Canada and elsewhere today is characterized by far too much short-termism. Mulroney was a partisan who did not believe that partisanship and civility were incompatible. Rather, he subscribed more to Winston Churchill’s view: “A good party man puts his party above himself and his country above his party.”

Reflecting on his time as prime minister and the importance of leaders taking a long-run view, Mulroney said, “I actually did govern not for good headlines in 10 days but for a better Canada in 10 years” and “I have always tried to do what I thought would be right for Canada in the long term, not what would be politically popular in the short term.” Five examples highlight Mulroney’s long-termism.

First, he tackled tough tax reforms that few politicians were willing to even contemplate. Starting with modernizing corporate taxation, Mulroney and Michael Wilson, his finance minister, then moved on to scrap the hidden and distorting manufacturers sales tax (MST), which harmed exporters and hindered investment, and replaced it with the wildly unpopular but effective goods and services tax. These policies laid the groundwork for future fiscal policy as Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin continued down this path. Ever the genial partisan, Mulroney once quipped, “Finance Ministers Michael Wilson and Don Mazankowski planted the garden and Paul Martin is picking the flowers.”

Second, he was the first prime minister in the postwar era to pursue privatization and serious deregulation. He privatized Air Canada, Petro-Canada, De Havilland and Canadair. By selling off non-rail assets like CN Hotels, he paved the way for the eventual the privatization of CN_, the most successful privatization in Canadian history. He also deregulated the transportation, telecom, financial services, and energy sectors. The Canadian economy continues to benefit from these long-term structural changes.

How did an electrician’s son from the paper-mill town of Baie-Comeau become so consequential at home and abroad? The answer is obvious: long-termism.

Third, he pursued historic free trade agreements with the United States. When the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) negotiations were falling apart, Mulroney told U.S. Treasury Secretary Jim Baker that he was going about to call President Reagan and say, “Ron, I want you to explain to me how it is that you have just concluded a nuclear reduction treaty with your worst enemies, the Soviet Union, and you can’t conclude a free trade agreement with your best friends, the Canadians.” He won the poker game, and the FTA was born, to be followed by the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA, which included Mexico. Exports to the United States anchor Canada’s trade to this day, and many companies including BMO, TD, CN and CP all eventually pursued greater North-South linkages in the wake of Mulroney’s transformative vision.

Fourth, he, his foreign minister Joe Clark, and his UN ambassador, Stephen Lewis, took a very strong, principled, and moral stand against the oppressive apartheid regime in South Africa. They were an effective troika in convincing a reluctant world that change was not only necessary, but it could no longer wait. Their position on sanctions was at direct odds with Ronald Reagan’s and Margaret Thatcher’s but, with a combination of diplomacy, persuasion, and personality, they pushed the G7, the Commonwealth, and the UN to their perspective. The Mulroney government was on the right side of history, culminating in Nelson Mandela’s release from prison and a changed South Africa. There is no better illustration of a middle power standing tall and using its influence for the betterment of mankind.

Fifth, Mulroney was an early environmentalist with a focus on long-run, meaningful actions. He essentially badgered the Bush administration into signing the landmark Canada-U.S. Air Quality Agreement, known as the acid rain treaty, in 1991. And he invested lots of political capital to make Canada a player at the seminal 1992 Rio “Earth Summit”.

In his approach to governing, which stands in stark contrast to today, Mulroney empowered his ministers to be ambitious and get big things done for Canada. He treated cabinet as the main forum for policy discussion and collective decision making as the Westminster system of governance intended. He delegated enormous responsibility to ministerial colleagues like Don Mazankowski, Michael Wilson and Joe Clark and it paid off. Mulroney also had deep respect for the federal public service, relying on their expertise and the leadership of senior public servants like Paul Tellier, Derek Burney, and countless others. Under Mulroney, the public service was ambitious, and it was constantly challenged to present big, bold ideas to ministers.

Let’s hope that current and future federal party leaders borrow a page from Brian Mulroney, and embrace hard-fought yet civil debate about transformational policies that drive long-term prosperity and cement Canada’s reputation as an honest broker and force for good in the world. As Mulroney wrote, “Incrementalism builds increments. Bold initiatives build nations.”

Kevin Lynch was Clerk of the Privy Council and vice chair of BMO Financial Group.

Paul Deegan was a public affairs executive at BMO and CN, and he worked in the Clinton White House.