Then-Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and U.S. President Ronald Reagan hold their first round of talks on March 17, 1985 in Quebec City.Scott Applewhite/Canadian Press
In the 1980s, industrial emissions were wafting over the Canada-United States border, falling as rain or snow and turning lakes into dead zones.
Brian Mulroney, who at the time was Canada’s Progressive Conservative prime minister, decided that had to change.
“Mulroney took it on personally, starting probably around 1984,” said Elizabeth May, the Leader of the federal Green Party, who between 1986 and 1988 served as a policy adviser in Mr. Mulroney’s government. She was speaking on Friday, the day after Mr. Mulroney’s death at age 84.
“He personally decided, and made it clear to everyone, that the top – not just the top environmental issue, the top bilateral issue between Canada and the United States – was acid rain. So any time there was a contact between Canada and the United States, acid rain was top of the list,” she said.
Those repeated contacts between Canada and the U.S. eventually resulted in the 1991 Canada-United States Air Quality Agreement, a pact under which both countries agreed to reduce the impact of transboundary air pollution.
That agreement and other landmark deals signed while Mr. Mulroney was in power highlight an environmental track record that resonates today, as the world grapples with biodiversity loss and climate challenges.
Bill Pristanski, who served in senior roles in the Mulroney administration, cited several major environmental achievements from that time, including the acid rain agreement. He also raised the 1987 Montreal Protocol, an international deal to phase out substances that deplete the ozone layer, a part of the Earth’s atmosphere that protects humans and other life from ultraviolet radiation.
“One could even say we saved the globe back then, because the ozone layers at both the South and North Pole were being depleted ... We were the first to sign it, we led it,” Mr. Pristanski said.
Persistence and personal relationships were part of Mr. Mulroney’s approach. When government representatives were putting the agenda together for a visit by president Ronald Reagan to Ottawa, the White House didn’t want acid rain on the agenda, Mr. Pristanski recalled.
“But Brian of course put it on the agenda and insisted on talking about it,” he said.
Mr. Mulroney helped close the acid rain deal by negotiating binding agreements with provincial governments and taking a “clean hands” approach, in which Canada used its pollution control measures to get the U.S. to follow suit, Ms. May said.
He also used his charm.
“The United States would never – and I can say that confidently, with a capital ‘N’ – would never have reduced pollution rates in Canada if it wasn’t for the personal relationship between Brian Mulroney and Ronald Reagan,” Ms. May added.
Mr. Mulroney was an early advocate for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. His government backed the Brundtland Commission, a UN body that published a 1987 report on sustainability.
He was also a key player in launching the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, held in June, 1992, and known as the Earth Summit, Ms. May said.
In 2006, Corporate Knights magazine named Mr. Mulroney the greenest prime minister in Canadian history.
The following year, speaking on the 20th anniversary of the Montreal Protocol, he called earning that label “one of the significant honours of my life,” and urged international co-operation to tackle climate change.
“First, it doesn’t really matter what the process is, so long as the problem is addressed by leadership – resolute leadership at the national level and co-ordinated leadership at the international level, particularly in the global forum of the UN,” he said in his speech.
In Ottawa on Friday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau praised Mr. Mulroney’s environmental record.
“Even as we were moving forward in signing a historic economic free trade agreement, he was also very, very firm in fighting against acid rain and fighting for a cleaner environment,” Mr. Trudeau told reporters, referring to the trade negotiations under Mr. Mulroney’s government that culminated in the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Mr. Trudeau added that Mr. Mulroney contributed to early government awareness of climate change.
Former prime minister Joe Clark also praised Mr. Mulroney’s persistence on the acid rain file.
“Acid rain felt not doable, particularly with the government we were dealing with in the U.S.,” Mr. Clark said.
“And he went and did it.”
With a report from Marieke Walsh