The following is the full text of a speech to the Albany Club's Sir John A. Macdonald Bicentennial Celebrations in Toronto on Thursday by former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.
I joined the Progressive Conservative Party at St. FX University in the autumn of 1955, 60 years ago.
The next year I was a delegate to the Ottawa convention and voted to elect John Diefenbaker as leader. I was 17 years old.
I have been an unfailing supporter of this party for decades under nine leaders and, when I became leader, we won large majority governments, remained in office for nine years and left an array of consequential achievements behind us.
In fact, by the time I retired, my government had given Conservatives more time in office than all Conservative leaders combined since R. B. Bennett, 58 years earlier.
We were the longest-serving Conservative government since those led 100 years earlier by the man we honour tonight, Sir John A. Macdonald.
If nothing else, this may qualify me to offer a few thoughts on the future of our party following the defeat three weeks ago.
In 2003, Conservatives found themselves still in disarray following what would be 13 years of government wins by the Liberal Party.
I will leave in silence tonight the reasons for those victories and the roles of those who split the Conservative vote down the middle, thereby ensuring, in Ted Morton's words: "… a free ride to the Liberals for 13 years." No more magnificent gift has ever been handed over from one opposing party to another in the long and turbulent political history of Canada.
Finally, people came to their senses and recognized that, in rendering both wings of our party unelectable, we had succeeded in finding a formula that guaranteed successive Liberal victories unless there was a change. Only unity could bring this about.
To the great credit of Stephen Harper, he made strenuous efforts to do precisely that. But you can't unite with yourself – it takes two to tango – you need a willing partner.
Peter MacKay and the Progressive Conservative Party was that partner.
Without his leadership and selflessness this would never have happened. Victory soon followed.
So I thank Peter tonight for his years of impeccable service and I underline for the historical record – because I was there with others playing a role in the process – that our unity is principally the result of the co-operation of two men – Stephen Harper and Peter MacKay. Both deserve our gratitude and respect and both will be recognized in history for having written such an important chapter together.
We do not need to learn this lesson again.
Canada's vibrant democracy is advanced by the collision of great ideas and the articulation of competing visions for our country. It may surprise some but this actually can be done effectively without the politics of personal destruction. There is room and often a need for powerful debate, dissent and disagreement any time a government acts in an important area of public policy. As they did in my time and as they will forever, opposition parties must be vigilant, vigorous and, if need be, unrelenting in their pursuit of a noble objective. And through it all – good days and bad – opposition parties must always retain a sense of optimism as they recall the words of Lester B. Pearson, who said: "Don't be downhearted in the thick of battle. It is where all good men would wish to be."
The part of political life I miss most is my caucus. I loved them all and deeply respected their sacrifice and admired their commitment. Their preoccupations became my priorities. So every Wednesday when caucus met, I witnessed a microcosm of Canada – replete with challenges and achievements, tensions and dreams – as I watched men and women from vastly different regions, backgrounds and languages struggling to understand each other's views while seeking to harmonize their differences into coherent national policy. Those moments exemplified for me the very essence of parliamentary democracy and the splendour of a commitment to Canada.
I will be forever grateful to that group of men and women – members of Parliament – who stood with me in proud and sometimes lonely solidarity – as we developed and defended policies some of which we knew to be unpopular at the time but which we believed to be in the long-term best interests of Canada and all her citizens.
It was a big and daring agenda: a wave of privatizations and deregulation, abolition of the National Energy Program and Foreign Investment Review Agency, the negotiation of the Canada-U.S. free-trade agreement, NAFTA and the Acid Rain Treaty, tax reform and the GST, Meech Lake and the creation of Le Sommet de la Francophonie, the Gulf War, the Green Plan and major environmental initiatives, and the fight to liberate Nelson Mandela and rid South Africa of the evil of apartheid.
Sometimes we succeeded and sometimes we did not.
But we did not fear failure. Our only lodestar was: Is this policy in the long-term best interests of Canada? If so, we did it. If not, we did not.
Slowly, imperfectly and courageously, those men and women – many of them unsung and unacknowledged – did Canada's business in a way that appreciably improved the lives of our citizens and brought honour to our country.
Tony Benn wrote in his diary when Margaret Thatcher resigned that prime ministers, on losing office, drop "into the darkest of all worlds between the headlines and the history books."
This need not be the case at all. Stephen Harper has rendered important service to Canada. He is needed in our rebuilding as is Joe Clark, Kim Campbell, Bill Davis, Mike Harris and their successors like Patrick Brown, their supporters across the country, their families, friends and neighbours, because only with the co-operation and support of all who wish to offer Canada a proud and responsible alternative will the Conservative Party ever again be invited back into government.
As Sir John A. himself said: "Our aim should be to enlarge the bounds of our party so as to embrace every person desirous of being counted as a progressive Conservative […]."
This is a time to heal old wounds, not to settle old scores.
In the words of Robert F. Kennedy, we should return to "the generous impulses that are the soul of the nation." There should be no ideological impediments to our welcome, no narrowness of view or vindictiveness of spirit as we review, renew and rebuild. We need all persons of good will who wish to help and all who seek to lead.
There has been a generational change in Canada. Our new Prime Minister is 43 years old, sparkling with promise and passion. I know that all Canadians wish him well.
Change will one day come but only when Canadians feel that we are worthy of their trust, that we reflect their values and that we offer them a vision of Canada that is grand, generous and true.
The Bible says: "Young men have visions and old men dream dreams."
Sometimes a splendid country like Canada needs the inspiration of a noble vision, and a great dream of what it can do for its citizens and what this magnificent nation can contribute to a new and dangerous world.
For our party, the challenge is great and the time is now.
We must approach the leadership change with prudence and care. Time will be required to get it right.
We must develop policies that build upon, for example, the strong economic achievements of the Conservative government, and that speak to the reality of our challenge in the context of the limitless hope Canada offers its people.
And we must articulate it all in a tone and with a voice that eschews harshness, celebrates the essential goodness of Canadians and speaks confidently and glowingly of what this superb nation can achieve when we come together as Conservatives in the optimistic pursuit of great and defining national goals.
Achievement occurs when challenge meets leadership.
Some years ago the legendary New York Times columnist Scotty Reston came to lunch with me at 24 Sussex in Ottawa. After an impressive "tour d'horizon," Mr. Reston said: "You know, Prime Minister, for the last 25 years I have opposed every single policy that your friend Ronald Reagan has ever stood for." Then he added: "And, during that same period, Ronald Reagan was twice elected Governor of California and twice elected President of the United States."
This self-deprecatory observation – I thought memorable because of its infrequency at the New York Times – was delivered somewhat ruefully as if Mr. Reston were perplexed by his own admission.
But to so wise an observer as Mr. Reston the answer surely should have been very clear. It's called leadership – that ineffable and sometimes magical quality that sets some men and women apart so that millions will follow them as they conjure up new visions and invite their countrymen to dream big and exciting dreams.
In his seminal work on leadership, James MacGregor Burns segregates "transactional" from "transforming" leadership. He writes that it is the transforming leader who "raises the level of human conduct of both leader and led … who responds to fundamental hopes and expectations and who may transcend and even seek to reconstruct the political system rather than simply operate within it."
Many suggest that great, inexorable currents of history themselves – and not individual leaders – seal our fate. In my judgment, however, Carlyle was on target when he observed that the right man or woman in the right place at the right time can completely change the course of history. I believe that to be true because I was there to see it happen.
In a brilliant address delivered some years ago in Toronto, Theodore Sorenson – himself a skilled observer of powerful leaders as special counsel to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson – said: "Once in office those who wish to stand up and stand out and leave something enduring behind must build new institutions, not new images. They must look to the next generation, not merely the next election. They must talk in terms of fundamental values, not merely costs. They must appeal to our hopes as well as our needs, to what we long to be and what we know is right. That's leadership."
Time is the ally of leaders who placed the defence of principle ahead of the pursuit of popularity. And history has little time for the marginal roles played by the carpers and complainers and less for their opinions. History tends to focus on the builders, the deciders, the leaders – in education, health care, science, business, the arts, as well as politics – because they are the men and women whose contributions have shaped the destiny of their nations.
Canada's greatest prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, died in 1891.
No more eloquent tribute to Macdonald was ever spoken than that delivered to a hushed House of Commons by his legendary opponent, Liberal Sir Wilfrid Laurier. Laurier said that, when considering "the supreme art of governing men, Sir John Macdonald was gifted as few men in any land or any age were gifted."
All prime ministers of Canada who have followed – including this one – have stood very much in Macdonald's shadow. Like other giants of the world stage, Sir John A. thought big and long-term.
"Depend on it," he once said, "the long game is the true one."
Consider the situation Macdonald had to deal with at the end of celebrations on July 1, 1867. Once the Governor-General returned to Rideau Hall and the revellers grew quiet, Macdonald faced a situation on the morning of July 2, 1867, that would have completely intimidated lesser men.
The nation he had formed with his courage and bare hands had fewer than four million citizens. The great republic to the south had 10-score more.
Canadians were divided by region, race and religion. Our governing structures were new and the rookie Prime Minister had, in fact, to invent many of them on the fly.
Most alarmingly, the Grand Army of the Potomac that had marched through Georgia under Sherman and defeated Lee at Gettysburg, was still under arms.
Due to British support of Confederate raiders during the just completed U.S. Civil War, and with stirrings of Manifest Destiny on the lips of many U.S. leaders, prospects for the new union of the four Canadian provinces – so tiny in comparison and hugging the U.S. border – were bleak.
Between Ontario and the Pacific lay the vast emptiness of Rupert's Land, coveted by many Americans and all but forgotten in the offices of Whitehall in London.
And who was this John Macdonald who faced these challenges without hesitation?
He was a Kingston lawyer who had entered politics at age 29. His first wife had died a slow and lingering death, finally succumbing to a mysterious and debilitating illness at Christmas a decade before Confederation. He and his wife had lost a child. As a boy, Macdonald had watched his own brother beaten to death by a drunken man on the streets of Kingston. As an adult, and like his father before him, this immigrant from afar faced a life-long battle with alcohol.
After Confederation, he and his second wife, Agnes, would be forced to watch helplessly as their beloved only child, Mary, was stricken with hydrocephalus.
In that his first term in office, Macdonald moved quickly. Though Canada could not afford it, Sir John A.'s government purchased Rupert's Land. He then promised British Columbia a 3,000-mile band of steel – the CPR – if they entered Confederation, and then proceeded to build it.
Only seven years after the celebrations on July 1, 1867, Macdonald was removed from office and crushed by the Liberals in the ensuing election.
In 1878, the same Canadians who had tossed him from office returned him to power with a majority.
Through the years of blistering personal attacks, unremitting and cruel media criticism, allegations of scandal and periods of deep family sorrow, he never looked back. He never whined. He never quit. He was a leader.
He fought his last campaign during the winter of 1891. The crowds who gathered before him sensed that every appearance might be his last.
"Sir John, you'll never die," they shouted.
How right they were.
When Macdonald's weary body finally gave out shortly after that last victory, a nation mourned.
Despite his trials and tribulations, his mistakes and failures – both human and political – Canada – Macdonald's Canada – was a transcontinental nation that truly stretched from sea to shining sea. The four provinces he had persuaded to come together in 1867 under his guidance were now seven and the groundwork for one of the world's greatest nations had been successfully laid.
As a Canadian columnist noted: "It is one thing for a leader to aspire high and fail; it is another for a leader to aim low and succeed. He might temporarily triumph but the country loses."
Macdonald aimed for the skies and won. And every single Canadian for the 148 years since has been the direct beneficiary of his vision and courage.
Like other privileged nations, Canada is often extremely resistant to change. Deep and important structural changes are indispensable, however, to maintain a growing economy and ensure the flourishing of peace and liberty, and they can only be brought about by a firm expression of political will.
As a contemporary observer noted some years ago: "In a nation ruled by polls and ratings, where even newspapers hire focus groups to see what kind of news readers want, we are losing sight of something we should have learned as teenagers: Just because something is popular doesn't mean it's right."
In fact "transforming leadership" – leadership that makes a significant difference in the life of a nation – recognizes that political capital is acquired to be spent in great causes for one's country. This is precisely such a time.
One cannot affect history unless he or she has been elected and that requires a unique set of skills.
But, once in office, it is vital to note that prime ministers are not then chosen to seek popularity. They are chosen to provide leadership. There are times when voters must be told not what they want to hear but what they have to know.
And what they have to know is a quotation from the Book of Proverbs inscribed on the Peace Tower in Ottawa: "Where there is no vision, the people perish."
Leaders must have vision and they must find the courage to fight for the policies that will give that vision life. Leaders must govern not for easy headlines in 10 days but for a better Canada in 10 years – and they must be ready to endure the attacks that often accompany profound or controversial change, while they await the distant and compelling sounds of a verdict that only history and a more reflective nation can render in the fullness of time.
In 1860, a future Father of Confederation said:
"I look to the future of my adopted country with hope, though not without anxiety: I see in the not remote distance, one great nationality bound like the shield of Achilles, by the blue rim of ocean – I see it quartered into many communities – each disposing of its internal affairs, but all bound together by free institutions, free intercourse and free commerce; I see within the round of that shield the peaks of the western mountains, and the crests of the eastern waves – the winding Assiniboine, the five-fold lakes, the St. Lawrence, the Ottawa, the Saguenay, the Saint John and the Basin of Minas – by all these flowing waters, in all the valleys they fertilize, in all the cities they visit in their courses, I see a generation of industrious, contented, moral men [and women], free in name and fact – men [and women] capable of maintaining, in peace and in war, a constitution worthy of such a country."
This is the way Thomas D'Arcy McGee, a young immigrant from Ireland, saw the future of his beloved Canada seven years before Confederation.
It is imperative that the Conservative Party come together in great convention and articulate an equally grand and elegant definition of the Canada we wish to see and shape for our children and theirs, and sustain it with Conservative principles and policies that are durable, compelling and strong.
That is what our founder and first leader Sir John A. Macdonald and his supporters did 150 years ago and that is precisely what we must begin to do today.
From the bloodied sands of Afghanistan to the pristine snows and powerful waters of the high Arctic – and everything in between – the Canada of 50 years from now will be defined by the leadership we are given today.
If all of us remember that freedom and liberty and fairness and the protection of minority rights are the very pillars of the national democracy that Sir John A. fought to build and to leave us, we can collectively make a contribution to the well-being of mankind that will bring honour to Canada and peace and prosperity to all her citizens.