When someone dies, everyone has praise for them. There is no question that Brian Mulroney had a major impact on Canada but in almost every case it was for the worse. I was President of the National Action Committee (NAC) on the Status of Women when Brian Mulroney was Prime Minister. I like to think we were his nemesis. We fought him on free trade, abortion, constitutional change, and Indigenous rights among other issues.
What none of the tributes mention is that Mulroney tried to re-criminalize abortion. After a decades long struggle, we managed to win abortion rights in 1988 when the Supreme Court struck down the abortion law. After the decision, Mulroney tried to re-criminalize abortion with a law that would make abortion illegal unless the woman’s health or life was at stake. This law was even stricter than the 1969 abortion law that was struck down. The bill passed the House of Commons, where the Conservatives had a majority but was defeated in the Senate by a margin of one. That one was Pat Carney, his right-hand woman in the free trade fight, but a strong pro-choice feminist. He fired her from cabinet, but she held her ground. It may be the only major government initiative ever defeated by the Senate. The pro-choice movement had built such a powerful majority in favour of freedom of choice on abortion that even a Conservative majority government couldn’t get a bill passed.
But Mulroney’s most important contribution was the negotiation of the US Canada free trade deal. The ideas of neo-liberalism, free trade, cuts to social services, tax cuts and privatization had taken root in Britain with Margaret Thatcher and the U.S. with Ronald Regan. A broad coalition of groups called the Pro-Canada Network fought free trade, as we called neo-liberalism then, and managed to hold it off for several years. It was the NAC employment committee, in particular economist Marjorie Cohen, that pointed out that free trade with the US would undermine our social programmes.
But NAC’s major impact on Mulroney’s reign was during the Constitutional debates. Mulroney was obsessed with getting Quebec to sign the constitution, which they refused to do when Pierre Elliott Trudeau repatriated the constitution. Today all we hear about is the Meech Lake Accord, which was defeated at the time that I was elected President of NAC. My first speech was at a rally for Elijah Harper, the Indigenous member of the Manitoba legislature who stood with an eagle feather refusing to permit a vote on the Accord. Unanimous consent from the provinces was needed.
Mulroney did not give up. He proceeded to prepare another attempt to amend the Constitution. This process was about the most democratic process we have ever seen in Canada, at least at first. Realizing that he had very little public support for changes, he asked independent policy organizations to hold people’s constitutional conferences in five cities, each on a different subject. One third of the invitations were open to ordinary citizens chosen by lottery, one third to groups like NAC and unions and one third to politicians. NAC decided to go to all of them and actively intervene. Our biggest concerns were a devolution of power to the provinces to respond to Quebec’s demand for more power. We agreed that Quebec was a distinct society and that they should have special powers while the rest of us had a strong federal government. Much to their surprise, we won the Halifax conference to our position and defeated their proposal. In every conference NAC, the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) and the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) were able to defeat or fundamentally change the government proposals. In the final conference in Vancouver, they attempted to overturn the decisions of the other conferences but failed.
Then he met with the Premiers and male Indigenous leaders behind closed doors in Charlottetown and rejected almost all of the recommendations of the conferences, going back to his original proposals. They decided to have a referendum on a bill that was called the Charlottetown Accord. NAC decided to say no. All three political parties, all provincial premiers, the AFN and even CLC were on the “Yes” side. NAC decided to say no because Indigenous women opposed it, a Canada Clause that lawyers told us would threaten women’s rights and the devolution of power to the provinces that threatened social programs, especially a national childcare programme, which we had not yet won. Headlines everywhere said “NAC says No.” The only major figures on the “No” side were me and Preston Manning, then leader of the Reform Party. Needless to say, we opposed the amendments on different grounds.
Polls showed that after NAC said no, the support for the “No” grew significantly and sure enough the Charlottetown Accord was defeated. I learned a lot about power at that time. The Accord was defeated but they carried out almost everything they wanted to do through legislation anyway. Now even though it was the most democratic process in Canada’s history or maybe because it was, no-one ever talks about it.
Yes, Brian Mulroney fought apartheid. Yes. he helped to stop acid rain. But he also brought savage capitalism to Canada in the form of free trade with the US. I didn’t know him personally. I worked with his minions, Joe Clark, Michael Wilson and Kim Campbell. The only time I ever met him was the year before I was President of NAC. Representing the Canadian Hearing Society, I was co-chair of a coalition of disabled people on employment equity with Beryl Potter, a triple amputee. I arranged for a group of us to bump into him in the corridors of Parliament. His staff had probably told him that a small group of disabled tourists were in the hall and it would make a good photo op. He was walking down the corridor in his usual arrogant stride with a big smile on his face. Then he saw Beryl, whom he knew and then he saw me, who everyone knew from the pro-choice struggle. The panicked look on his face at that moment was one of the highlights of my political career. Beryl grabbed him with her one arm and wouldn’t let go until he promised to make the employment equity bill stronger.
He didn’t but I convinced her to let go.
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