According to many of the obituaries, Brian Mulroney was an internationalist, justice-minded statesman. In reality Mulroney promoted the US Empire and economic policies benefiting the rich during his time as Canada’s Prime Minister from 1984 to 1993.

For example:

  • Five thousand Canadian military personnel were deployed to the Middle East during the early 1990s Iraq war. Among few other coalition members, Canadian fighter jets engaged in combat with CF-18 Hornets joining US and British ships in destroying most of Iraq’s hundred plus naval vessels in what was dubbed the “Bubiyan Turkey Shoot.” Coalition bombing destroyed much of Iraq’s civilian infrastructure including electricity production, sewage treatment plants, telecommunications equipment, etc. Twenty thousand Iraqi troops and thousands of civilians were killed. Initially part of a UN mandate, Canada’s military operations went beyond what the UN authorized. In the lead-up to the war the Mulroney government was hawkish on a conflict that deepened the US foothold in the region. Canada’s aggressiveness grew after Iraq bombed Israel. Soon after SCUD missiles were launched at Israel the PM told the House of Commons: “We have resolved never to remain indifferent while Israel is threatened with mass destruction.”
  • This hyperbolic statement was part of Mulroney’s staunchly pro-Israel posture. In 1988 the prime minister told an Israel bonds dinner: “I am the heir of the rich spiritual and cultural legacy of Israel, which is the core of Western civilization. I have admired modern Israel in the way one admires a miracle.” That statement came a year after Israel began suppressing the first intifada (uprising). Mulroney told the CBC that Israel’s brutal suppression of rock-throwing Palestinian youth was handling the situation with “restraint.” When questioned by a CBC reporter about the similarity between the plight of Palestinians and Blacks in South Africa, Mulroney replied that any comparison between Israel and South Africa was “false and odious and should never be mentioned in the same breath.” At the 1987 Francophonie summit Canada was the only country (41 participated) that failed to support a resolution calling for Palestinian self-determination. More than a decade after most of the world supported the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s admission to the UN, the US finally agreed to initiate low-level contacts with the PLO. Ottawa refused to follow Washington’s lead. Abdullah Abdullah, the PLO’s representative in Ottawa, complained that “Canada is now the last country in the world outside of Israel that does not formally deal with the PLO.”
  • Under Mulroney Canada was the only country in the Americas, besides El Salvador, to support the 1989 US invasion of Panama after President Manuel Noriega, formerly close to the CIA, decided to support Central American-led peace negotiations. Mulroney said “we regret the use of force… but the United States was justified” in pursuing an invasion that left 4,000 Panamanians dead.
  • The Mulroney government also supported Washington’s April 1986 airstrikes on Libya designed to kill that country’s president. Despite failing to kill Mohammed Gaddafi, the bombs left 37 dead and 93 wounded.
  • After maintaining Canada’s support for Jean-Claude Duvalier until a popular revolt ousted the 30-year dictatorship the Mulroney government put up tens of millions of dollars in the late 1980s to promote “Duvalerism without Duvalier”. After Jean-Bertrand Aristide was overthrown by the military in 1991 Canada is said to have been supportive of Haiti’s first ever legitimately elected president. But Mulroney’s government used its influence with the popular, but cornered leader, to press US demands, notably the odious Governor’s Island’s accords, granting immunity to the military officials responsible for the bloody coup and forcing Aristide to accept a consensus prime minister.
  • The Mulroney government heavily promoted Boris Yeltsin’s disastrous sell-off of public assets in Russia. It also spent tens of millions of dollars to promote International Monetary Fund structural adjustment programs across Africa, which devastated many countries’ health and education sectors.

As for his supposed role in ending South African apartheid, an important part of Mulroney’s aim was to ensure the disintegration of racial apartheid didn’t lead to socialist economic transformation. In a 1987 letter to the Toronto Star, Foreign Affairs Minister Joe Clark explained the government’s thinking: “Canada has been able to develop a relationship of trust with the … African National Congress that it is hoped has helped to strengthen the hand of black moderates.”

Mulroney’s death has led to an outpouring of ahistorical, racist and anti-activist commentary about his opposition to South African apartheid. After decades of protest by civil society, Mulroney’s government finally implemented economic sanctions on South Africa in 1986. The Conservatives only moved after numerous other countries had already done so. “The record clearly shows”, notes The Ambiguous Champion: Canada and South Africa in the Trudeau and Mulroney Years, “that the Canadian government followed rather than led the sanctions campaign.”

Unlike Canada, countries such as Norway, Denmark, New Zealand, Brazil and Argentina also cut off diplomatic ties to South Africa. Even US sanctions, due to an activist Congress, were tougher than those implemented by Ottawa. From October 1986 to September 1993, the period in which economic sanctions were in effect, Canada’s two-way trade with South Africa totaled $1.6 billion — 44 percent of the comparable period before sanctions (1979-1985).

To the extent that Mulroney deserves praise it is that he took a more principled position towards the apartheid regime than erstwhile allies London, Israel and Washington. Or, to put it differently, Canada was the best of a bad lot.