Brian Mulroney, the son of an electrician who served two terms as Canada's prime minister, forged close ties with President Ronald Reagan as a conservative and Cold War ally, and became one of the first Western leaders to formally recognize the dangers of climate change, has died at 84 .
His daughter Caroline Mulroney announced the death in a post on X, the former social media platform Twitter, but gave no further details. He had heart surgery last year after treatment for prostate cancer.
Mr. Mulroney followed an unlikely and meteoric path to leadership in the early 1980s: He rose from relative political obscurity to take the helm of the Canadian Conservatives at a moment of internal party turmoil.
He had already made himself rich as a corporate lawyer and showed some innate political skills. He could manipulate crowds, wear down opponents in marathon negotiations and was unafraid of bold economic moves, such as selling state-owned companies and crafting the North American Free Trade Agreement with the United States and Mexico.
Tall, square-jawed and beaming with a smile, he even seemed like a studio executive in an era defined by Reagan, a bona fide former movie star.
Mr. Mulroney knew highs and dark lows. In 1984, he led to one of the largest political landslides in Canadian history, but plummeted to almost unprecedented levels of unpopularity less than a decade later.
He was often criticized for adapting his views and policies to suit the moment and for having an out-of-control ego. Political observers speculated that Mr. Mulroney, who came from a humble Quebec background, saw himself as an outsider who constantly needed to prove his mettle.
After his political career ended, allegations of abuse of power emerged. A government investigation in 2010 found that Mr Mulroney had accepted envelopes containing cash totaling at least $225,000 after he left the prime minister's office. The payments were allegedly part of aviation lobbyist Karlheinz Schreiber's efforts to win Canadian contracts for his clients, including Airbus.
The panel's report called Mr. Mulroney's apparent actions “inappropriate” but did not trigger new legal proceedings. Mr. Mulroney had previously denied any wrongdoing and was ordered by the government to pay $2.1 million in damages in 1997 in a libel case that arose from investigations into the allegations.
In the end, Mr. Mulroney left a complicated legacy.
“Mulroney has several images,” wrote Jonathan Malloy, a political scientist, in 2008. “Among them are a tough ideologue, a milquetoast fanatic, an obsession with polls, a deep indifference to public opinion, a slick operator whose sophistication is constantly was discovered, a statesman and possibly a crook.”
But his influence on Canada was undeniable. His government signed NAFTA in 1992 and accelerated the selloff of state-owned companies, including such iconic holdings as Air Canada in the late 1980s and energy giant Petro-Canada in 1991.
One of his government's most startling – and controversial – moves came in 1991 with the introduction of a 7 percent national goods and services tax, which raised prices across Canada but helped stabilize government finances.
Mr. Mulroney also proved to be a pioneer on social issues. He promoted greater recognition of the rights of indigenous peoples and led to Canada becoming one of the first Western countries to ratify an international biodiversity convention and a climate change agreement, both signed in 1992.
His deputy prime minister, Don Mazankowski, once described Mulroney's greatest achievement as bringing Canada into the 21st century.
Martin Brian Mulroney was born on March 20, 1939 in Baie-Comeau, Quebec, a paper mill town on the north bank of the St. Lawrence River. His parents traced their roots to Ireland but raised their children as loyal Quebecois, with Mr . Mulroney and his siblings switch seamlessly between English and French.
Mr. Mulroney attended a Catholic boarding school in New Brunswick and graduated from St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia in 1959. While studying political science, he took on local organizing roles for conservatives. He graduated from Université Laval in Quebec City in 1964 with a law degree and joined a powerful Montreal law firm now known as Norton Rose Fulbright.
He continued to participate in politics Organizer and adviser to the Quebec branch of the Progressive Conservative Party, which had been forced from power by Pierre Trudeau's nascent Liberal Party.
As a member of a commission formed in 1974 to investigate union practices at the James Bay hydroelectric project, Mr. Mulroney made national political contacts. The commission's bombshell findings – including allegations of underworld infiltration of unions – gave Mr Mulroney his first taste of the country's political spotlight.
In 1976, Progressive Conservative leader Robert Stanfield resigned after a series of election losses. Mr Mulroney lacked practical political experience but ran for the post of party leader.
He ran a fundraising campaign — a “sexy, fast-paced campaign,” he later said — that included his private jet and that earned him the nickname “Cadillac Candidate.”
After a third-place finish, he went into a tailspin, although he kept his job as an executive at Iron Ore of Canada. According to several biographies, he battled alcohol abuse and apparent bouts of depression.
A defining moment for Mr. Mulroney occurred during a business trip to Romania in 1980. When several glasses of Rémy Martin were lined up in front of him in the lobby of the Intercontinental Hotel in Bucharest at closing time, he exploded in anger at his friends for appearing to be concerned seemed about his drinking.
The next morning, according to a 2005 biography “The Secret Mulroney Tapes” by Canadian author Peter C. Newman, Mr. Mulroney announced: “Guys, I just made a decision. I'm driving the car. I'm going to play tennis this summer and get mine [stuff] together and my head in shape.”
Mr. Mulroney kept his word. He later owed his rise – and his return to politics – to his wife Mila Pivnički, the daughter of a Serbian doctor who had immigrated to Canada. She threatened to leave him and take the children with him if he didn't stop drinking and the infamous carousing, wrote Canadian political journalist John Sawatsky in “Mulroney: The Politics of Ambition” (1991).
Mr Mulroney and his wife had four children, Ben, Caroline, Mark and Nicolas. His daughter entered Ontario provincial politics. His son Ben is a well-known Canadian television personality. A full list of survivors was not immediately available.
In 1983, Mr. Mulroney won a Nova Scotia parliamentary seat and took over the leadership of the Progressive Conservatives. By the next year, Trudeau's government was at an end and opinion polls suggested growing conservative opposition. Mr Mulroney and the Tories seized the opportunity and almost doubled their seats in the then 282-seat Parliament in one of the biggest political disputes in Canadian history.
Mr. Mulroney soon faced his first crisis: the bombing of an Air India Boeing 747 on the Toronto-New Delhi route in 1985. The attack over the Atlantic killed 329 people, including 268 Canadians. Years later, Canadian officials apologized for shortcomings in the investigation and possibly for ignoring warnings from India about an impending attack by Sikh militants.
Meanwhile, Mr. Mulroney maintained ties with Reagan – based on their shared Irish heritage, Cold War politics and belief in deregulation. At the so-called “Shamrock Summit” in Quebec City in 1985, the two tuxedo-clad leaders belted out “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.”
But Mr. Mulroney also made public criticisms of U.S. foreign policy during his two terms in office, which included re-election in 1988. He told C-Span in 1993 that he believed Washington often ignored Canada, its largest trading partner, while paying a lot of attention to the “tin” pot dictators in Central America in the 1980s. He opened Canada to refugees fleeing oppression by U.S.-backed regimes in El Salvador and Guatemala.
By the early 1990s, Mr. Mulroney's political fortunes were in free fall. The goods and services tax gave opponents an important weapon. In a 1992 poll, Mr. Mulroney's approval rating was a disastrous 11 percent. He retired from politics in 1993 and was replaced as Prime Minister by then Defense Minister Kim Campbell.
The 1993 election was a disaster for the Tories. The party went from 156 seats in parliament to two.
“Popularity is bad for you,” Mulroney once quipped in a 1992 campaign speech, according to the Toronto-based National Post newspaper. “I try to avoid it like the plague, and I’ve been somewhat successful.”