Mr. Speaker, I rise to remark on the life of the Right Hon. Brian Mulroney, in the hope of looking at his life as a way for us to look toward the future.

I was a young, grade 11, student at Centre Wellington District High School in Wellington County in 1988 when I joined the Conservative Party. There was an election that would take place later that fall. That spring I joined the party to campaign for my local member of Parliament at the time, who has become a very good friend, the Hon. Perrin Beatty. That was my first step into the life of politics.

I clearly remember why I joined the party. I clearly remember why I helped campaign for Perrin Beatty in 1988 as a young high school student. It was because I believed in the vision that Brian Mulroney outlined for this country. It was the free trade election that many have referenced in the House. It was a big shift in Canadian policy, the free trade agreement between Canada and the United States. In fact it was arguably the biggest shift in foreign policy in Canada in a century, since the reciprocity election of, I believe, 1911, when then prime minister Laurier argued for free trade and the Conservatives of the day argued against it and in favour of what was called the national policy. Canadians at that time decided against free trade and decided to implement a series of tariff barriers to protect domestic industry and shield it from foreign competition.

Brian Mulroney, after listening to experts in 1986 and 1987, decided that it was time to spend some political capital and convince Canadians to do away with the over 100-year-old policy that Sir John A. Macdonald had implemented, the national policy, in order to ensure our future prosperity. That is exactly what he did. The 1988 free trade election was arguably one of our only recent modern elections that has been about foreign policy, because it essentially was about Canada's relationship with the United States. I joined the party at that time as a young teenager, a high school student, because I believed in his vision, in his confidence in what this country was and could be.

When we look at the track record of the Mulroney government, we see a remarkable record. It implemented the last series of big tax reforms that we have seen. We all know about the 1971 tax reforms that were the result of the Carter commission, but many of us have forgotten the reforms of 1987 and 1988 and, subsequently, of the early 1990s. The Mulroney government took 10 federal tax brackets and reduced them to three. It eliminated a punitive 13.5% manufacturers sales tax and replaced it with a value-added goods and services tax that expert economists had been arguing for since the early 1970s, all in an effort to unleash the productive capacity of the Canadian economy. It implemented monetary policy reform at the Bank of Canada under the leadership of then governor John Crow by implementing inflation targeting of 2%, which is with us to this day. It also privatized and deregulated many industries, unleashing productivity, growth and job creation in those industries.

On top of doing all of that, it actually, over its term in government, brought the budget to an operating surplus. The reason that is significant in today's context is that it was the Mulroney government that was the last government in this country to meet our NATO 2% defence spending commitment. It was also the last time we came close to meeting the overseas development assistance goal of spending 0.7% of gross national income on aid to the world's most vulnerable and poorest.

It was also the government that was ambitious in its foreign policy when it came to the environment. It was the government that helped put in place the Montreal Protocol, which banned substances that contained chlorine and bromine, that came into effect in 1989 and that effectively helped close off the ozone hole, which continues to be repaired to this day as a result of that protocol.

It was the government that implemented what we now call the acid rain treaty, which was known as the air quality agreement, that convinced Republican President Ronald Reagan to sign on to such an agreement, as well as his successor George Bush, in order to de-acidify the freshwater lakes in much of Canada, particularly throughout the Canadian Shield, many of which had become dead lakes because they had become so acidic they no longer could support the native flora and fauna as they once did.

It was the government that introduced the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, which is something near and dear to my heart as an Ontario MP, that touches on four of the five Great Lakes, Great Lakes that hold one-fifth of all the surface freshwater on the planet.

It was a government that accomplished those foreign policy goals in the environment, in defence and in overseas development assistance, all the while bringing the Government of Canada's operating budget to a surplus during the nine years it was in power.

On top of all that, the late Prime Minister Mulroney led the charge in the Commonwealth to stand up against an apartheid regime in South Africa. He was a leader in joining with allies on so many other initiatives.

Perhaps the greatest accomplishment of the late prime minister Brian Mulroney was to instill in this country a confidence about who we are and what we could be. He was the prime minister who said to Canadian businesses that they can compete with the best in the world and that they do not need a tariff wall to protect them from competition, because he knew Canada, Canadians and Canadian businesses, and he knew they were excellent. He knew they could compete with the best in the world.

He instilled in our academic researchers that same kind of confidence with the initiatives he undertook to fund post-secondary education and research. He instilled in all parts of the country this idea that Canada had boundless potential and that it was only limited by our own limited horizons about what we could be.

Perhaps his greatest accomplishment was to instill in a new generation of Canadians, who would later follow him to serve in the House and who hopefully will come to serve in subsequent Parliaments, the idea that we can be the best in the world, that we can compete with the best in the world and that we can strive for and can achieve excellence.

I want to thank Mr. Mulroney for his contributions to this country. I want to particularly thank his family, Mila, Caroline, Ben, Mark and Nicolas, for the sacrifices they made over so many years and for allowing Mr. Mulroney, a father and a husband, to donate and to contribute so much to this country we call home.

Michael Chong

$499,968.00