Brian Mulroney

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Canadian politician, elected the Deputy of Nova Scotia on 29 August 1983. Mulroney became the Canadian Prime Minister for the Progressive Conservative party on 4 September 1984. He won his victory by a wide margin because of his ability to appeal to many Canadian Tories with his perfect bilingual French. He governed for eight years, emphasizing Canadian needs to do business on the global market. He made the North American Free Trade Agreement between the U.S., Mexico and Canada a priority in his government. Despite his re-election in 1988, Mulroney's popularity began to sink in the opinion polls. Since the early 1990s, Canada suffered an economic crisis of soaring debt and an unemployment rate over 11 percent. On 24 February 1993, he resigned from office dogged by the three-year recession, bickering provinces and the French-English divisions and rivalries. Mulroney was born in an isolated smelting town on Quebec's North Shore. He was the son of an electrician and attended St. Thomas Catholic High School in Chatham, New Brunswick at 14. In 1955, he went to St. Francis Xavier University and graduated with honors in arts and commerce in 1959. He went to Lavel University and received his law degree in 1964. As a lawyer, he discovered his gift for negotiating in labor relations. As a member of the Cliche Commission from 1974-1975, he was an investigator into the Quebec construction industry where corruption and violence were rampant. He won notoriety in Quebec with his successful exposure of wide scale corruption. In 1976, Mulroney became Vice-President of the Iron Ore Company. A year later, he became President of the company for six years. Active in Conservative party politics since his years in college, Mulroney won his first election in 1984. He became Canada's 18th president and was inaugurated on 17 September 1984. Mulroney's landslide victory was geared for economics which were pro-business and pro-American. He was able to funnel more funds to the military on a modest level and strengthen Canadian visibility in NATO. On the same day in 1993 that he resigned as Prime Minister, he also resigned as the leader of the party, going back into law for a big firm in Montreal. Mulroney married Mila Pivnicki in 1973. His wife was instrumental in rallying supporters for her husband's election campaigns. The couple had one daughter and three sons. Link to Wikipedia biography