Madam Chair, I am both honoured and saddened to be standing in my place today as we pay our respects and send our condolences to the family of the late Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney, Canada's 18th prime minister.

I was recently asked by a local journalist what words I would use to describe our former prime minister, and it was these: statesman and leader. It was that leadership and dynamism of Brian Mulroney that drew me to the Progressive Conservative Party in 1983. How many young Canadians can say they were rivetted to their television screens, watching a political convention? I was in June 1983, so please do not hold that against me.

Learning more about our leader and his background, his story really resonated with me. Here was a successful businessman and lawyer who had come from modest means, yet family was the foundation upon which he would build his future life and career. He was so proud of his upbringing and his father, a hard-working electrician employed at the iron ore mine in the small town of Baie-Comeau.

This struck me because, as a first-generation Canadian, my family came here in the 1950s with nothing more than the hope of a better future for their family and future children, family as the foundation. After arriving in Niagara Falls in March 1951, my dad landed a job at Cyanamid Canada in May that year and went on to a successful 40-year career, working as a general labourer, and then he retired as the facility's maintenance supervisor.

Simply put, my dad loved his job, and his great wish was for both me and my brother to go to school and to get a great education. The great success of Canada is the fact that if one was prepared to work hard, one could accomplish anything one set their mind to. My dad personified that statement and went on to provide everything we could have ever asked for as children and young adults.

My dad knew nothing of the operations of our political system. However, when I decided to get involved after university, he was there to support me and my local Conservative candidate and member of Parliament for Niagara Falls, who I would later go on to work for. Why would my dad do this? He knew that it was my passion and that family was our foundation.

It really is an interesting path that all of us take, which allows us to become those individuals fortunate enough to have the extreme and rare privilege of sitting in this esteemed place to represent our communities and our constituents. That path for me was forged first in 1983 and then, following university, in 1988 when I came here to Ottawa to be a political staffer for the Hon. Rob Nicholson. When I came here, I had the good fortune of establishing great friendships with a number of people, including with the member for South Shore—St. Margarets and the member for Calgary Centre.

I became involved politically at that time because change was needed, and I believed the agent of that change was Brian Mulroney, leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. What an incredible time it was to be in Ottawa, as the Conservative government under the leadership of Brian Mulroney tackled issues head-on, be it standing against racist policies like apartheid, advocating for the release of Nelson Mandela, achieving the acid rain agreement or establishing free trade with our largest trading partner, the United States.

Former Prime Minister Mulroney did what he always felt was right and was in the best interests of all Canadians. He did so because he built his success and his drive on the foundation of family: his loving wife Mila, and his children, Caroline, Ben, Mark and Nicolas.

Recently, in a CTV interview, the late Prime Minister Mulroney's official photographer, Bill McCarthy, relayed the story of how family was incredibly important to him, and he told the photographer, “Billy, I'm going to tell you something right now: there's nothing more important in your life than your family.”

I want to end on a quote from the former prime minister when asked what leadership was and what it entailed. In 2004, he said, “Leadership is the process, not only of foreseeing the need for change, but of making the case for change. Leadership does not consist of imposing unpopular ideas on the public, but of making unpopular ideas acceptable to the nation.”

Brian Mulroney was a leader, and he will be greatly missed. My deepest condolences to his wife Mila, and to his beloved children and family.

Tony Baldinelli

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