Brian Mulroney, Prime Minister of Canada from 1984-1993, has died at 84

[Flyersfan232]

Uh, that's not how I've seen him generally portrayed, but tbf I've never looked into Canadian politics as in depth as with France or the US or even Britain, so I might have missed something. I'm pretty sure he did further significant elements of the neoliberal agenda, but you might be right that he didn't go as far as most of his contemporaries in that respect. Good on him if so.

Most such reforms were actually carried out under Chrétien (by his Minister of Finance Paul Martin, basically a US Republican until he became PM and governed like a typical Liberal) and by provincial governments — Harris, Klein, Devine and such. The worst thing Mulroney did was probably his response to the Oka crisis, and that was really inexcusable.

There were significant spending cuts under Chretien with Paul Martin due to the deficit crisis which was a real crisis despite what some of the left wing conspiracy theorists say and along with that, significant devolution of powers to the provinces, since the Federal government at that time could not offer money to the provinces to dictate policy to them.

As with it also being the case that nearly all the privatization in the U.S was done under President Clinton and not Reagan, neither Chretien/Martin nor Clinton did these things for any ideological reason but due to the reality of their nations' enormous debts and the things they had to do to address that.

I admit I'm under the stress of moving, but sometimes the amount of B.S that is posted about politicians by people who don't understand or don't know the context of why they did what they did really annoys me.

Don't criticize what you can't understand.

Well to be fair to our French friend, Mulroney served around the same time as Reagan, and Thatcher ( the two most famous neoliberals of that time period.) And so it's easy for anyone who's not Canadian, to put Mulroney in the same tent as Reagan and Thatcher.

Furthermore, I think it's fair also to say that Canada's political party System is unique, because you have 3 major parties, but the two big big ones are either neoliberal ( the liberals ) or canadian tory conservative. A social democratic party like the new democrats have never played a significant role in Canadian politics like in France or Britain. I hope I'm correct on that.

That's a bit of a stretch. The NDP holds power in two provinces now, and have been in government in four others. Plus, they were the official opposition in 2011, and have played major roles in minority governments, including the current one. But, I digress.

Mulroney often gets lumped in with Regan and Thatcher for obvious reasons...



But of course, he was much more moderate than them. His work on Apartheid and the environment should be commended. But we shouldn't also forget that he was on the right wing of the conservatives (both Clark and Campbell ripped up their party cards after the merger in 2004, while Mulroney embraced it), even if he's seen as being more moderate from today's perspective. His handling of the constitutional crisis and his other scandals nearly ripped the country apart, and really accelerated Canada's regional polarization of the 1990s, as Reform and the BQ were created in part as a backlash to his unholy coalition of Western populists and Quebec nationalists.

wasnt he a friend of trump in as late as 2017 too he lived in retirement in palm beach Florida so