Prime Minister Brian Mulroney (far right) at the Rio Earth Summit, 1992/UN Photo

By Elizabeth May

March 2, 2024

That I should even have been remotely acquainted with Brian Mulroney was a long shot. To have become a friend, and to love him as a friend, was beyond long odds.

I was and am an environmental activist. I am deeply opposed to the neoliberal agenda of deregulation, trade liberalization and ever-smaller governments. Yet those ideological goals were the ones with which Brian Mulroney is most closely identified.

Our friendship is even more unlikely given that I had resigned on principle as an advisor to his environment minister when that minister had approved dams in Saskatchewan without any environmental assessment — violating the federal guidelines order. In the 1988 leaders’ debate, Ed Broadbent had accused Mulroney of a poor environment record based on my resignation.

Mulroney shot back that he wondered how Broadbent could take the word of “Ms. May” (words he fairly spat out) over those of his highly respected minister? That moment is rather frozen in time in my memory bank. I remember thinking “He knows my name. I’ll never work in Ottawa again.”

From that place of deep discord how could we have become friends?

There were many steps along the way. First, was the remarkably unlikely event that then-environment minister, Tom McMillan, would send various envoys to approach me and ask me to meet with him. He wanted me to join his staff as senior policy advisor. That was in 1986. I asked many friends for advice. The late Charles Caccia, a dyed-in-the-wool Liberal, former environment minister under Pierre Trudeau and dedicated environmentalist, was the only one to urge me to reject the offer. He warned me “You will only be window dressing.”

But I took the job and to this day count it as one of the luckiest breaks of my life. I had an incredible front-row seat to how government should work when it works well.

Mulroney set the stage for a global ‘law of the atmosphere’, arguing the first plank was acid rain, the second protection of the ozone layer and the third addressing and preventing global warming. It was 1988.

Once in the job, I discovered that the prime minister was committed to delivering serious environmental policy, as was my boss, McMillan. Coming from my work as an activist and environmental lawyer, I was given the job of handling all environmental policy. As the only non-Tory in the office, all other staff did the politics, and I got all the issues.

I worked to help deliver strong environmental policy on everything from environmental assessment to toxic chemicals management, protecting the Great Lakes, establishing national parks from Gwaii Haanas to Ellesmere Island (Quttinirpaaq National Park) Georgian Bay, Pacific Rim and Grasslands, as well as new legislation – the Canadian Environmental Protection Act and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, and new institutions, the Canadian Ambassador for the Environment, and the National Round Table on Environment and Economy.

Under Mulroney, Canada was an early supporter of the work of the World Commission on Environment and Development – the “Brundtland Commission.” And that led directly to leadership at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit.

By far the most stunning accomplishments were won in the fight to stop acid rain — gaining agreements with the seven eastern provinces and ultimately wrangling agreement from Ronald Reagan’s White House — and the negotiated treaty that saved the ozone layer, the 1987 Montreal Protocol. His early leadership in the fight to avert the climate crisis is worth more than an honourable mention.

That commitment to address climate change when it would still have been possible to avoid levels of warming that drove glaciers into deep retreat, acidified oceans, super-stoked storms and heat domes was on full display at the seminal 1988 conference held in Toronto, “Our Changing Atmosphere: Implications for Global Security.” In his keynote address, Brian Mulroney set the stage for a global “law of the atmosphere,” arguing the first plank was acid rain, the second the protection of the ozone layer and the third addressing and preventing global warming. It was 1988.

In the lead-up to the 1992 World Conference on Environment and Development, the pivotal “Earth Summit” held in Rio in June 1992, Mulroney and his environment ambassador, the late Arthur Campeau, resolved a number of environmental crises. By that time, I was executive director of Sierra Club of Canada, carrying my infant daughter — then just shy of one year old. Mulroney, Campeau and I became friends in a way I could never have done as a member of the environment minister’s staff. Mulroney doted on my baby daughter.

In the 48 hours before the opening of what was to that date the largest gathering of heads of government in the Earth’s history, President George H.W. Bush attempted to kill the Treaty to protect Biological Diversity. The US pharmaceutical industry objected to the treaty’s provision that should a developing country’s ecosystems yield a valuable product for medical use, there would be “an equitable sharing of benefits”.

Madagascar and the rosy periwinkle were a prime example of the lack of equity. Madagascar’s rare forests were the only habitat for the plant, which had valuable pharmaceutical properties. Madagascar received nothing, undermining any economic benefit in preserving rare forests. Equitable sharing of benefits would create an incentive to preserve rare ecosystems. But Big Pharma wanted none of it. As Bush tried to kill the treaty so that it would be DOA at the Earth Summit, Mulroney saved it. Less than 24 hours after Bush’s announcement, Canada stepped up, thus pre-empting a number of countries from joining Bush.

The environmental achievements of the Mulroney years are amazing. It’s an effort just to list them all, much less describe them in any detail.

At COP15 in December 2022, the nations of the world gathered in Montreal for the “Kunming-Montreal” conference to protect biodiversity under the terms of the treaty Mulroney saved in 1992.

The environmental achievements of the Mulroney years are amazing. It’s an effort just to list them all, much less describe them in any detail.

Mulroney and I really became friends around 1995, after I wrote an opinion piece for the Globe and Mail titled, “An Environmentalist Misses Brian Mulroney.” I wrote that whatever was achieved under Progressive Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney was a floor below which Liberals could not sink, but that under Liberal prime minister Jean Chretien, Liberals had dropped below the floor and were excavating the basement.

By 2006, for the first time, I had joined a political party — the Green Party — and become deeply involved in the partisan politics I had always avoided. But my friendship with Brian Mulroney continued to deepen and grow. Paying tribute to him on Earth Day 2006 at the Greenest Prime Minister awards is one of my favourite memories. Mulroney’s speech was carefully crafted but the message to newly crowned PM Stephen Harper was clear — avoiding catastrophic global warming is not a partisan choice. It called for leadership and it was urgent.

In these days after his death, I can hear his voice calling for real action; trying to remind Canadian leaders that hyper-partisanship serves no one.

I was not ready for his passing, and I know I will really miss him. It just seemed he was always there. Please God, that the political leadership in this country will try to live up to his example.

Policy Contributor Elizabeth May is leader of the Green Party of Canada.