Apolitical Staples

I was 7 during the 1988 election and I remember arguing in favour of free trade. I also seem to remember that our class voted Liberal in a staw poll, while I was Tory. How times change…

Hold on… I would have been 9.

Ironic how Tory premiers or prime ministers who prevail in back-to-back majorities are remembered by the leading media and intelligentia as unpopular.

Math is hard.

I’m a old fart, so I was already a respectable working type in my late twenties when Mulroney came along. I remember well the night he became Conservative leader; I’d been invited by younger friends to a frat party at the U of T and was teaching the kids how to use a bong when the news came through. I recall how bitterly disappointed I was, and how convinced I was that there’d been a terrible mistake and a lost oppportunity.

To this day I feel much the same. I held Mulroney in utter contempt at the time, and my opinion of him dropped soon after, but in the end he earned my grudging respect. He could have been a great Prime Minister. He wasn’t, although it’s to his credit that some of the time he tried. And we have to admit that he could have been a disaster, but in fact he did more good than ill. And I never thought much of him, but he was obviously and easily a better man than Trudeau.

He wasn’t the man we needed, but he was the best man available. I can’t really like him but I can’t condemn him.

Free trade is great. What Mulroney gave us - government-managed trade heavily tilted in favor of cronies and political donors, plus high taxes - is something else.

It’s not clear that Mulroney made us any better or worse off than we would have been under someone like John Turner. As hard as it is for anyone to believe who thinks that PET, the “Lieberals” and Jean Poutine are Beelzebub’s minions, under the Conservatives Canadians suffered from about the same amount of corruption and waste as they did both before and afterwards. Because corruption and waste grow in exactly the same proportion as the size of government. They are the natural way in which ill-gotten gains are squandered. Always have been always will be.

Instead of real conservatives (or real liberals) all we have are a lot of weasly opportunists who at most will occasionally (for tactical purposes) claim that “of course the government is the fount of all goodness and no government welfare program will ever be dismantled, but if elected we promise that we will give people a miniscule tax cut/credit and we will allow them a ridiculously tiny amount of freedom to choose non-government alternatives in one or two marginal and inconsequential areas of their lives.”

The day I see a federal politician denounce transfer and equalization payments and vow to rescind the Canada Health Act and dismantle EI is the day I will start paying attention to federal political debates or opinion polls. Ditto for the Ministries of Health, Education and Breaking Up Families (or whatever they call it) at the provincial level, and the Departments of Free Housing for Crack Addicts, Pretentious Art Subsidies and Welfare Cheques at the municipal level.

What a money quote from Mulroney:

“While compatriots like Pierre Sevigny, Guy Charbonneau and Paul Sauve were fighting off Nazis on the battlefields of Europe in the summer of 1943, Trudeau and his friends were fighting off blackflies in OUTREMONT…during the same period young Trudeau acted in an anti-Semitic play, spoke strongly in favour of fascism, stated that England and Germany were equally responsible for the war and urged Quebecers to…prepare to ethnically cleanse their province, if need be, to ensure the creation of a pure French Catholic state.”

Wow. Do you think Mulroney has a message for the voters in the upcoming Outremont by-election? The motto of Quebec isn’t “je me souviens” for nothing.

I think you’d have to be a very sophisticated economist to determine whether free-trade was ‘good’ or ‘bad’ and if you were such, you would have multi-syiballic words to describe the effects of free trade on Canada. In theory, unrestricted free-trade benefits a country, but how does the theory play out in the case of a massive, meritocratic, free-market, profit-maximising counry like the US, and Canada. (Insert your preferred adjectives here.) ?

I don’t think we needed the FTA. Didn’t the softwood lumber dispute take until 2005 to settle!??? (Hmmm…maybe ‘might makes right’?) Wouldn’t successful and innovative Canadian companies either thrive in the US market and/or get purchased by US companies in any case?

I just don’t think anyone can truly say, with proof, that FTA was good for Canada. The converse is also true.

I just wanted to comment on this site in defense of Mulroney ‘cause the G&M compared ‘accomplishments’ of the 2 PMS as being ‘one brought home the constitution and instituted a charter of rights’ the other ‘instituted FTA and the GST’. Vicious media.

Rant over.

Mulroney has his own portrayal of what it was - and, how would young people today feel about a draft? A sin not to believe in the draft?

Where was Mulroney during the Korean War? He was old enough.

Sadly, Mulroney wasted a golden opportunity to point out his legacy and instead he’ll go down as a vindicitive, petty man who plays the victim and blames everyone else. Sad - he blew it.

“Page 355 in Pierre Trudeau’s book Memoirs:

People often ask me what I think of the years of Mulroney government that followed my time on office. I’m not impartial on the subject, and therefore I’d rather not comment on it. .. It’s in my interest not to set a bad example for the Canadian people by demonstrating any lack of respect for a former prime minister. “

h/t Scottdiatribes

See - that’s the difference - “class”. Mr. Mulroney, your expensive suits don’t give you class - and respect is something you earn - obviously you didn’t.

Lynne,

While I’m not warm to Mulroney’s tactic, forget about selling Trudeau’s virtues simply by referencing an entirely unnecessary, self-serving paragraph from his memoirs. Trudeau did all his vindictive hacking and slashing while Mulroney was in office. If he was truly above slagging Mulroney in his memoirs, he would have avoided drawing attention to the subject and let others comment on this ommission.

Lynne: Where was Mulroney during the Korean War? He was old enough.

Mulroney was around 14 when the war ended; you really consider that “old enough”?