Britain’s former Prime Minister and Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher, passed into history on this date in 2013. One of the world leaders who paused to pay tribute to her was our own Brian Mulroney. He worked closely with Thatcher during his term as Prime Minister of Canada and a warm friendship ensued. Mulroney penned a tribute column to her and it was published on April 8, 2013. He recalled her support for his signature Free Trade Agreement with the United States.
The Right Honourable Brian Mulroney: At the G7 Summit at Hart House in Toronto in June 1988, Margaret Thatcher made it very clear that the closing communiqué should refer positively to the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement in no uncertain terms.
The original draft said the leaders welcomed the FTA. She agreed with me that we should “strongly welcome” it. And so we did.
She was definitely not for the turning.
When the summit concluded she came to Ottawa, as previously arranged, to speak to a rare Joint Session of Parliament in the House of Commons chamber.
In my introduction, I noted that she had been re-elected the previous year for a third consecutive majority term as British prime minister, and quoted her famous line that she felt she could “go on and on.”
She did go on and on, to my delight and to the chagrin of the Liberals and NDP, about the FTA.
“Canada and the United States are pointing the way with the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement, which the Economic Summit warmly endorsed,” she declared.
“I understand that it may be a controversial matter in this chamber. I will only say that I do not underestimate Canada’s courage in taking this step in partnership with its giant neighbour, but on the basis of Britain’s experience of joining the European Community, you need have no fear that Canada’s national personality will be in any way diminished.”
Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist. He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy. A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.