Former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney has passed away - Brian Mulroney, one of Canada's most consequential prime ministers, is dead at 84 | CBC News .
It’s going to be interesting, to say the least, to hear how people view his legacy.
Just saw that on the news. Yes, I agree that the discussion about his legacy will be interesting. He was a somewhat polarizing figure.
I don’t think people could say Mulroney generally did not have Canada’s interests at heart. Free trade was a big deal, and it was brave to open up difficult constitutional issues, though not successfully. He did remarkably well for an anglophone from rural Quebec, the first PM with working class parents. He had legal but little political experience when he became PM.
But he wanted to be liked a little too much, had a slightly unctuous quality, was a mix of false bravado and being too sensitive and had some serious ethical lapses with the Schreiber Airbus deal despite suing the Liberals. He seemed to be a loyal family man - don’t remember Mila saying much in public; Ben was a B-list celebrity. The Conservative policies he supported seem pretty moderate by current standards, he did speak up about some global injustices and for the environment. He also piped up at the right time when Trump was threatening NAFTA. But he was not exactly my favourite politician, for many, many reasons. The GST stung.
At least when he wasn’t accepting envelopes of cash from lobbyists.
That’s why I said generally. 
Another summary.
Not so:
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Alexander Mackenzie’s father was a carpenter in Scotland. He died when Alexander was 13, and Alexander went to work to support his mother. He was apprenticed as a stone mason.
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Mackenzie Bowell’s father was a cabinet-maker.
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Borden’s father was a farmer, which in pre-mechanised times was hard physical labour;
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Meighen’s father was also a farmer.
I stand corrected.
A similar comment was made on The National by a reporter for The Economist. Though it seems incorrect, the list is not a long one.
That’s a fascinating reflection of a major demographic shift that has happened over the last 156 years - at the time of confederation, the population of Canada was around 20% urban, 80% rural. At present, that demographic is reversed - 20% rural and declining, 80% urban and increasing. I’m off to see if I can find the article from years ago that I’m quoting from memory…
Ah, this doesn’t easily reflect the specific figures I just quoted, but it does illustrate the fact that rural growth has been much, much smaller than urban growth. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/220209/g-a003-eng.htm .
…and I can tell you first hand that Covid has not gone away - I tested positive yesterday. I’m lying around drinking fluids and feeling really stupid…
True, it’s only four. But there have only been twenty-three Prime Ministers. That’s 17% from working class background.
The list of truly wealthy Prime Ministers, with inherited money, is even shorter: the two Trudeaus, and Paul Martin Jr., for 13%.
The rest were from middle class families: merchants, ministers, lawyers, newspaper editors, and so on.
Take good care of yourself! Sorry to hear about it.
And Mackenzie was the only PM for the first 50 years of Confederation who didn’t seek/get a knighthood. With his background, he didn’t think much of it.
Ah, thank you! The worst thing about getting it now is my son’s band is opening for Wicca Phase Springs Eternal at The Velvet Underground this evening, and I have to miss it!
Good enough to get by for basic purposes. I used to be close to fluent.
I’m not sure I agree; the Campbell situation was unusual, with Canadian party alignments all changing at once and the PC party splitting in three, shedding votes to the Reform and BQ. Had the PCs even just remained unified with Reform, they still would have lost, but it would not have been the catastrophe it was; there’s a off chance the Liberals would have been kept to a minority.
If Trudeau steps down, the Liberals aren’t going to split up into the Liberals and Some Other Liberal Party; that is not in the cards.
They’re almost certainly going to lose - I’d say the CPC has, at worst, a 90% chance of winning - but the results will be fairly conventional whether or not Trudeau remains leader.
The Canadian economy is getting hammered! One presumes Coyne does not consider Mexico to be part of North America, but still…
Article Excerpt (below, Globe & Mail)
…If you took a poll, I suspect you would find most Canadians still think of us as one of the richest countries on Earth: maybe fifth or sixth. And at one time we were. As late as 1981, Canada ranked sixth among OECD countries in GDP per capita, behind only Switzerland, Luxembourg, Norway, the United States and Denmark.
But we’re not any more. As of 2022 we were 15th. Over the 40-odd years in between, Canada’s per capita GDP grew more slowly than that of 22 other OECD members. Countries that used to be poorer than us – Ireland, the Netherlands, Austria, Sweden, Iceland, Australia, Germany, Belgium, Finland – are now richer than we are.
And over the next 40 years? You may recall that arresting chart in the 2022 budget, projecting Canada would have the slowest growth in per capita GDP among OECD countries out to 2060. We need to fully comprehend what this means. We are no longer one of the richest countries on Earth. Among the richer countries, we are on course to being one of the poorer.
The picture is particularly distressing when you compare where we are with our nearest neighbour. As of 1981, per capita GDP in Canada was 92 per cent of that of the U.S.; by 2022 it had fallen to just 73 per cent. Drill down into the national data and it looks even worse. The economist Trevor Tombe has shown that Canada’s richest province, Alberta, would rank 14th among U.S. states. The poorest five provinces now rank among the six poorest jurisdictions in North America. Ontario ranks just ahead of Alabama. British Columbia is poorer than Kentucky.
Even this somewhat overstates our position. Canadians work more hours, on average, than people in other countries…
…the contrast with the United States is striking: Up to about 2000, labour productivity in the two countries grew at roughly comparable rates. Since then, U.S. productivity has grown nearly three times as fast.
And when is this embarrassing anachronism of provincial trade barriers going to be dealt with?
(Excerpt):
Provincial governments, focused as they are on their own interests rather than the broader economic health of the country, simply have no motivation to do away with nakedly protectionist liquor laws, professional certification regulations and product standards that close their boundaries to Canadian goods and services.
Which means Ottawa needs to find a way bribe or otherwise cajole the provinces into doing the right thing. Of all the issues that are throttling Canada’s prosperity…. – interprovincial trade barriers have the most direct impact on productivity and the cost of goods in this country.
In 2017, the Bank of Canada said a 10-per-cent reduction in those barriers would reap a 0.6 per cent increase in GDP over three years. The International Monetary Fund said in 2019 that removing all the barriers would produce a 3.8-per-cent increase in GDP, equivalent to $90-billion per year at that time.
The loss of all that economic activity costs the federal government $15-billion a year in lost revenue, according to a 2022 estimate by Scotiabank
Day three of home with Covid - ugh! The bright spot, though - I’ve signed up for CBC ‘Gem’, and I’m catching up on a bunch of shows I haven’t seen before! Johnny Harris’ “Still Standing” is a lovely combination of stand-up comedy and talking about what keeps small towns going by talking to the people themselves. And I’m also re-watching ‘Schitt’s Creek’, which seems like the diametric opposite.
My sister married a rancher in 1976, and she’s made a habit of living near towns that are two or three degrees of separation away from places people have actually heard of…
No Wayne and Shuster?
An excellent suggestion, but they don’t seem to have any… 