Former Progressive Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney is calling for ambitious action on the climate crisis, even if it’s unpopular with voters, and praising former Liberal environment minister Catherine McKenna for trying to deliver on that expectation.
“In the final analysis, successful leaders do not impose unpopular ideas on the public, successful leaders make unpopular ideas acceptable to the nation,” he said earlier this month in Toronto, where he was accepting an environmental leadership award from Pollution Probe. “This requires a compelling and convincing argument, one made from conviction and combined with the will, the skill, and the disciplined commitment to make that argument over, and over, and over again.”
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Mulroney, who led majority governments in 1984 and 1988, added that “change of any kind requires risk, political risk”. But “as difficult as the process may be to arrest and to mitigate the effects of global warming, the work cannot be left to the next fellow. The stakes are too high, the risks to our planet and the human species too grave.”
Which means that “those who aspire to national leadership must craft an agenda that responds to the hopes and aspirations of all Canadians. Small, divisive agendas make for a small, divided country. It is not enough to simply please ‘the base’.”
The National Post says Mulroney never advocated for carbon pricing in the prepared remarks for his appearance, but praised McKenna’s work during her four years in the environment portfolio. McKenna was named infrastructure and communities minister in last week’s cabinet announcement, with former fisheries minister Jonathan Wilkinson moving to environment.
“As St. Thomas Aquinas admonished leaders everywhere, and for every age: ‘If the highest aim of a captain were to preserve his ship, he would keep it in port forever’,” Mulroney said. “That was not my way when I was prime minister, and it cannot be our way now. In fact, Minister McKenna has worked in a highly challenging area for the last four years in a competent manner in which she sought to advance our national interest as she saw it.”
