Tkachuk, Gormley reflect on Mulroney’s impact on Canada

Tributes and reflections continued to pour in Friday following the passing of former prime minister Brian Mulroney.

Former senator David Tkachuk, who hails from Saskatoon, got to know Mulroney in the 1970s. Tkachuk helped get Mulroney elected in 1984 and the prime minister eventually appointed Tkachuk to the senate in 1993.

Tkachuk had nothing but praise for Mulroney.

“I was very saddened by his passing and Canada lost a great Canadian who was a fabulous prime minister who established Canada on the international stage,” Tkachuk said. “We were a respected country with Brian Mulroney and (he) worked hard to eliminate the deficit that was caused by Pierre Elliott Trudeau.”

In 1976, Tkachuk lobbied for Mulroney to become the leader of the Progressive Conservative Party.

“I supported him because he was a 36-year-old young guy. He was smart and I saw something in him. I thought he had tremendous leadership abilities and that’s why I supported him,” Tkachuk explained.

“I thought there had to be a changing of the guard. The other young candidate, Joe Clark, won. So there was a changing of the guard, but not the one I wanted.”

After the Conservatives lost the election in 1980, Tkachuk helped lobby again for Mulroney to become leader and eventually helped him win the federal election in 1983.

Tkachuk said Mulroney was a kind person, but was also someone who fought hard for the Conservative Party.

“Don’t get the impression that he wasn’t a tough guy politically, because he was,” Tkachuk chuckled. “He went after the Liberals and NDP big time when he was in politics.

“When he retired from politics, that’s a whole different thing. He tries to get along with everybody. He was very kind to people and lovely to work with politically.”

Tkachuk added he wishes he could have work with Mulroney more directly in government. Tkachuk says Canada was lucky to have Mulroney.

“(He was responsible for) the free trade agreement, the reduction of the deficit (and) the strengthening of western opportunity through the free trade agreement,” Tkachuk said.

“He didn’t run on the free trade agreement in 1984. He was not a free trader – he was convinced of it by (former Alberta premier) Peter Lougheed and others in the west because they saw that as an opportunity for us here — (but) he went ahead and did it. It was an amazing story because it was not a popular thing and in 1988 in the election, he took it on and won and signed the agreement shortly after.”

Tkachuk served as a senator representing Saskatchewan from 1993 until 2020.

Former Progressive Conservative MP John Gormley said he was saddened by the news of Mulroney’s passing and called him a “transformative’ Canadian prime minister.

Gormley was one of 211 MPs elected in 1984, which was the most seats ever won by a party in Canadian history.

He said he was able to learn a lot from the PM.

“Mulroney had an ability to bring pretty disparate points of view and even disparate personalities together,” Gormley said.

“He did a good job of bringing a lot of different points of view of Canada into one room. Things like the (Canada-U.S.) free trade agreement, things like relationships to break down apartheid in South Africa — these were things that were very important at the time and Mulroney was a worldwide part of that.”

Gormley said Mulroney was endowed with a great deal of charisma.

“He was a very articulate man. He was a great speechmaker. He could sell vision. He could sell the idea that people could aspire to something,” he said.

However, Gormley said there were shortfalls as well, such as the Meech Lake Accord and the Charlottetown Accord. Gormley also mentioned Mulroney leaving politics under a black cloud.

Although Mulroney was part of one of the greatest electoral victories in Canadian history in 1984, he was also part of one the greatest defeats in 1993.

Mulroney resigned as leader in February of that year and was replaced by Kim Campbell. In the October election, the Progressive Conservatives went from 156 seats to two.

“I think the lesson over 10 years in public life was it’s possible to get great things done but it’s also possible to alienate Canadians and regions of Canada,” Gormley said. “But I think Mulroney will go down as a pretty significant prime minister in this country’s history.”

— With files from 980 CJME’s Daniel Reech