History was made on this date in 2017 when former Tory Prime Minister Brian Mulroney (along with his widely respected past chief of staff, Derek Burney) attended a cabinet committee meeting of ministers in the Liberal government of PM Justin Trudeau. Mulroney, whose government successfully negotiated the Free Trade Agreement with the United States which was later expanded to include Mexico as part of the wider North American Free Trade Agreement, was invited to the meeting to offer his expertise and advice as the Trudeau government held talks with the ever-complicated U.S. Administration led by Donald Trump as NAFTA was re-negotiated.
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.