Canada’s Former PM Mulroney, Who Led North American Free Trade, Dies At 84

Canada’s former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, who led his country into a sweeping free trade deal with the United States, has died. He was 84.

Mulroney, who governed Canada from 1984 to 1993, died peacefully surrounded by family, his daughter, Caroline Mulroney, said on Thursday.

“On behalf of my mother and our family, it is with great sadness we announce the passing of my father, The Right Honourable Brian Mulroney, Canada’s 18th Prime Minister,” she said in a post on X. Born in the French-speaking province of Quebec, Mulroney worked as a lawyer and then business executive before successfully challenging for the leadership of the centre-right Progressive Conservatives in 1983 and entering parliament later that year.

Mulroney led the Conservatives to a historic win over the Liberals of Pierre Trudeau the following year and retained power in the 1988 election.

During his nine-year tenure, Mulroney emulated the liberal economic policies that were ascendent in the US and the UK during the 1980s under Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.

In one of his most consequential achievements, he signed the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement with Reagan in 1988.

The deal, which later expanded to include Mexico as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), helped boost Canadian exports, but was criticised in subsequent years for encouraging the outsourcing of jobs to cheaper locales.

Canada’s last Cold War leader, Mulroney also opposed apartheid in South Africa, forged a landmark treaty on acid rain with Washington and led efforts to respond to the 1984 Ethiopian famine.