honeybadgerpress.ca

Mulroney Ignored Working People - Made Canada a Harsher Place

Perhaps it is time for some clarity on the late Brian Mulroney’s harsh legacy

The Hill Times: 27 March 2024

Before becoming prime minister in 1983, “labor lawyer” Mulroney was president of the Iron Ore Company of Canada, and after arranging severance for redundant Schefferville, Quebec employees; he quietly dismissed the company’s Labrador workers with nothing.

He subsequently cooperated with the corporate elite to gradually erode Canada’s social democratic character, thus creating an increasingly individualistic nation. Now, the same public he marginalized as prime minister are funding his state funeral. If the $368,000 price tag of Jack Layton 2015 state funeral is any indication, Mulroney’s send-off won’t be cheap.

Later, Mulroney’s NAFTA policies harmed the Canadian economy by prioritizing shareholder rights at the expense of working people in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. As well, his unreported cash payments from German criminal Karl Heinz Schreiber and Mulroney’s subsequent wrist slap from CRA undermined public faith in Canada’s legal and taxation system.

The infamous Somalia scandal would not have occurred if Mulroney had resisted pressure from George H.W. Bush and not sent the elite but ill-suited Airborne Regiment on what later became a disastrous peacekeeping mission.

Post-politics, Mulroney entered Canada’s academic scene, although his children attended American universities. According to a 2016 joint investigation by the Toronto Star, CBC/Radio-Canada…:
“A new $60-million university institute in Nova Scotia celebrating former prime minister Brian Mulroney…got a good chunk of that financing from donors embroiled in international controversy…a number of the power players bankrolling the Mulroney Institute of Government at St. Francis Xavier University have checkered resumés.”

The memory of Brian Mulroney’s wit and charm are cold comfort to working people whose legitimate concerns were blithely ignored by the late prime minister.