Raymond B. Blake, ed. - Transforming the Nation: Canada and Brian Mulroney

Raymond B. Blake, ed.

Transforming the Nation: Canada and Brian Mulroney

Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2007

Pp. xix + 456. Cased. $85. ISBN 978-0-7735-3214-4. Paper. $29.50. ISBN 978-0-7735-3215-1.

This fine volume comprises an editor's introduction, a foreword, sixteen essays by academics and commentators, plus tributes from John Crosbie and Bob Rae. Mulroney's government was elected in a landslide in 1984, his party destroyed by an avalanche in 2003. It was always likely that his record would be more kindly assessed in retrospect, especially among academics, if only because most of them hated him when he was in office. As L. Ian Macdonald puts it: 'In his first term, he took the centre and held it. In the second, he set the agenda and dominated it. In both, he made history.' (p. 432) Contributors offer a balanced appraisal of the Mulroney record. He was superb at electioneering. In economic policy, his government struggled to curb debt, but its deregulatory policies created a surplus. Free trade was not initially the driving force, but quickly became the symbolic centrepiece. In social policy, he was never a red-blooded Thatcherite. Formal advances in women's rights probably stemmed from the 1982 Charter of Rights. Contributors regret rather than condemn the Mulroney legacy on national unity. Alienating both Quebec and the West complicated intergovernmental relations, while the failure of his constitutional project limited what could be done for Aboriginal people. Mulroney rates surprisingly well on environmental issues and gets credit for stressing human rights in external policy, although overall defence and international relations seem unimpressive. Northern development is a perennial fantasy and the Archangel Gabriel could not have satisfied Canada's cultural community. Overall, these essays throw useful light on the question of political leadership in Canada. Decisive leadership from the front ─ Borden in 1917, Trudeau in 1981 ─ can split the country. But the alternative, cautious, 'Old Tomorrow' approach of Macdonald and Mackenzie King requires the prime minister to know when to pounce. Mulroney's unhappy allusion during the 1990 constitutional talks to rolling the dice referred not to gambling but to timing. Public trust was dented by issues such as patronage, but Mulroney's fundamental weakness was that he talked like a consensual leader while sucker-punching Canadians into terrifying change. Like him or not, Mulroney carried free trade, imposed the GST and almost re-wrote the constitution. Raymond Blake rightly calls him 'clearly one of the most significant and important prime ministers Canada has ever had.' (p. 14)