The Environmental Path of Globalization
W
hen Brian Mulroney became Canada’s 18th Prime Minister in 1984, Apartheid in South Africa was entering its most violent period. Government militias raided and murdered in black townships, while the resistance bombed and carried out gruesome necklace executions, forcing a rubber tire filled with gasoline around a victim’s chest and arms before setting it on fire. Nelson Mandela had served 19 of his 27 years in prison on notorious Robben Island, in the worst years he slept on the floor and was permitted one 30-minute visit every 12 months. The white government was shutting him out.
Because he had pushed the African National Congress (ANC) toward armed resistance before his captivity, Mandela remained the majestic symbol of struggle to end Apartheid. He was the centrepiece of talks at the 1987 Commonwealth summit in Vancouver, where, according to its charter, Mulroney became chair for the next two years. He remembers, “The fight at the time was between myself and Margaret Thatcher because Mrs. Thatcher was very opposed to the manner in which I proposed to lead The Commonwealth.”
While sitting with Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Ghandi, Mulroney forcefully told Thatcher she must budge on South Africa. Thatcher was furious and repeated demands for Canada’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Reid Morden, to stop taking notes of the meeting. “It was pretty serious,” says Mulroney, who also stood squarely with sanctions despite the will of United States President Ronald Reagan. “We punched very much above our weight in those circumstances.” Four months after his release in 1990,Mandela’s first trip abroad was made to the Canadian Parliament. “As he told me, he wanted to underline Canada’s role in freeing him and for helping so much in South Africa,” says Mulroney. “I was given an opportunity to leverage
Canada’s reputation and influence, significantly.” His lead on Apartheid helped to bring about ANC recognition and the creation of a nonracial society in South Africa. Mulroney’s efforts earned him respect even with the opposition: “Paul Martin always said that Canada’s role during that period was, he thought, one of our very finest accomplishments.”
Within months, Martin and the Liberals, led then by Jean Chrétien, turned NAFTA, the GST and Meech Lake into public antipathy for Mulroney. Chrétien’s 112-page Red Book of opposition policy quite literally destroyed the Progressive Conservative party, but the promises to reengineer NAFTA and GST turned toward separation battles with the Parti Québécois. Mulroney’s groundbreaking work with policies like the Acid Rain Accord and the ozone-focused Montreal Protocol was shelved until Chrétien breathed new life into Federal environmentalism in 1998 by signing the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gases and climate change. But then the government fell into years of ineffectiveness, kicked off by the play-yard fight between Chrétien and Martin, followed by the atrocious sponsorship scandal – all but dwarfing the controversy surrounding Mulroney on the Airbus affair. Next the Liberals were forced to admit their $2-billion bungling of the gun registry. The Liberals screwed up and left Canadian policy in limbo for at least four years, the most vital time to take action on Kyoto.
Canada’s environmental face has fallen hard, leaving the country in a weakened international position to fight through the dark days of globalization, when leadership and vision is needed to find the light of a new age. The environment is a deadly serious issue that will dictate Canada’s ability to operate a sustainable economy. Whether policies move toward carbon taxes or economic indexes of Green GDP, business is ready for progress and common-sense politics.
Read the full story exclusively in the March 2007 print edition of PrintAction |
