Brian Mulroney - Party Leader

Party Leader

By late 1982, Joe Clark's leadership of the Progressive Conservatives was being questioned in many party circles and among many Tory members of Parliament, despite his solid national lead over Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in opinion polls, which stretched to 19 percent in summer 1982. Clark's reputation as a leader had taken a beating when, as Prime Minister, he carelessly lost a non-confidence motion over his minority government's budget in December 1979, leading to the fall of his government; the PCs subsequently lost the federal election held two months later when Trudeau rescinded his announced retirement, and returned to lead the Liberals to a majority. Many Tories were also annoyed with Clark over his slowness in dispensing patronage appointments after he became prime minister in June 1979.

Mulroney, in spite of publicly endorsing Clark, organized behind the scenes to defeat Clark at the party's leadership review. Clark's key Quebec organizer Rodrigue Pageau was in fact a double agent, working for Mulroney, undermining Clark's support. When Clark received an endorsement by only 66.9 per cent of delegates at the party convention in January 1983 in Winnipeg, Clark resigned and ran to regain his post at the 1983 leadership convention. Mulroney, despite still not being a member of Parliament, ran against him again, and he campaigned more shrewdly than he had done seven years before. Mulroney had been criticized in 1976 for lacking policy depth and substance. He addressed that weakness by making several major speeches across the country in the early 1980s, and collected them into a book, Where I Stand, published in 1983. Mulroney also avoided most of the flash of his earlier campaign, for which he had been criticized. Mulroney was elected party leader on June 11, 1983, beating Clark on the fourth ballot. He attracted broad support from the many factions of the party and especially from representatives of his native Quebec. Two months later, Mulroney entered Parliament as the MP for Central Nova in Nova Scotia, winning a by-election in what was then considered a safe Tory seat after Elmer MacKay stood down in his favour. This is standard practice in most parliamentary systems.

Throughout his political career, Mulroney's fluency in English and French, with Quebec roots in both cultures, gave him two trumps which eventually proved decisive.

Because of health problems shortly after becoming party leader, Mulroney quit smoking in 1983.

By the start of 1984, the Tories had taken a substantial lead in opinion polling, as Mulroney began learning the realities of parliamentary life in the House of Commons. It was almost taken for granted that Trudeau would be heavily defeated by Mulroney in the general election due no later than 1985. Trudeau announced his retirement in February, and the Liberal Party chose John Turner, previously the Minister of Finance under Trudeau in the 1970s, as its new leader. The Liberals then surged in the polls, to take a lead, after trailing by more than 20 percentage points. Only four days after being sworn in as Prime Minister, Turner called a general election for September. In doing so, he had to postpone a planned Canadian summer visit by Queen Elizabeth II, who makes it her policy to not travel abroad during foreign election campaigns. But the Liberal election campaign machinery was in disarray, leading to a weak campaign.

The campaign is best remembered for Mulroney's attacks of a raft of Liberal patronage appointments. In his final days in office, Trudeau had controversially appointed a flurry of Senators, judges, and executives on various governmental and crown corporation boards, widely seen as a way to offer "plum jobs" to loyal members of the Liberal Party. Upon assuming office, Turner, who had been out of politics for nine years while he earned a lucrative salary as a Toronto lawyer, showed that his political instincts had diminished. Turner had been under pressure to cancel the appointments, but chose not to, and instead proceeded to appoint several more Liberals to prominent political offices, per a signed, legal agreement with Trudeau.

Ironically, Turner had planned to attack Mulroney over the patronage machine that the latter had set up in anticipation of victory. In a televised leaders' debate, Turner launched what appeared to be the start of a blistering attack on Mulroney by comparing his patronage machine to that of the old Union Nationale in Quebec. However, Mulroney successfully turned the tables by pointing to the recent raft of Liberal patronage appointments. He demanded that Turner apologize to the country for making "these horrible appointments." Turner replied that "I had no option" except to let the appointments stand. Mulroney famously responded:

"You had an option, sir. You could have said, 'I am not going to do it. This is wrong for Canada, and I am not going to ask Canadians to pay the price.' You had an option, sir--to say 'no' — and you chose to say 'yes' to the old attitudes and the old stories of the Liberal Party."

Turner froze and wilted under this withering riposte from Mulroney. He could repeat only, "I had no option." A visibly angry Mulroney called this "an avowal of failure" and "a confession of non-leadership." The exchange led most papers the next day, with most of them paraphrasing Mulroney's counterattack as "You had an option, sir--you could have said 'no.'" Many observers believe that at this point, Mulroney assured himself of becoming prime minister.

In September, Mulroney and the Tories won the largest majority government in Canadian history. They took 211 seats, three more than their previous record in 1958. The Liberals won only 40 seats, their worst performance ever at the time. At the time, it was also the worst defeat for a governing party at the federal level in Canada. The Conservatives won just over half of the popular vote (compared to 53.4 percent in 1958) and led in every province, emerging as a national party for the first time since 1958. Especially important was the Tories' performance in Mulroney's home province, Quebec. The Tories had only won the most seats in that province only once since 1896—the 1958 Tory landslide. However, largely due to anger at Trudeau and Mulroney's promise of a new deal for Quebec, the province swung over dramatically to support him. The Tories had only won one seat out of 75 in 1980, but took 58 seats in 1984. Mulroney himself yielded Central Nova back to MacKay to run in the eastern Quebec riding of Manicouagan, which included Baie-Comeau.

In 1984, the Canadian Press named Mulroney "Newsmaker of the Year" for the second straight year, making him only the second prime minister to have received the honor both before becoming prime minister and when prime minister (the other being Lester Pearson).