5 Reinventing Canada: National Unity and Canadian Identity in the Mulroney Years (5/6) -- Canada and Speeches from the Throne

5 Reinventing Canada: National Unity and Canadian Identity in the Mulroney Years Deklen Wolbaum Introduction Brian Mulroney continues to exist in the collective memory of many Canadians as a profoundly unpopular prime minister. The failure of the Meech Lake Accord and the Charlottetown Accord, and the recession in the early 1990s, together with the introduction of the hated Goods and Service Tax (GST) led to the collapse of the Progressive Conservatives in 1993, leaving the party with a meagre two seats in Parliament after the 1993 federal election. Examining the changes in the Mulroney government’s Throne Speeches and his Leaders’ Day Addresses allow us to understand the evolving ideas that the Mulroney government had about the Canadian identity and how to achieve national unity. The Throne Speeches allowed Mulroney to connect with the Canadian people and they revealed to the country the government’s wishes and goals for Canada. These speeches not only tell Canadians what the government planned to do, but they often defined and reinvented the Canadian identity. The government of Brian Mulroney largely achieved those objectives in the Throne Speeches. His speech in 1984 was centred on the idea of reinventing the Canadian identity and creating a new Canada. These reinventions, however, did not succeed in uniting Canada as Prime Minister Brian Mulroney had hoped. The Mulroney government broke the long-standing Liberal dominance over Canada when his party captured more than fifty-percent of the popular vote and an unprecedented 211 seats in Parliament in 1984.1 Mulroney crafted a coalition of Quebec nationalists, Eastern Tories, and Western economic and social conservatives within the Progressive Conservative party, and he convinced them that he was the person to lead his party to victory and replace the long-governing Liberals.2 When the Mulroney government came to power in 1984, they had inherited a Canada that faced a number of severe challenges. Canada’s disunity and fragmentation had heightened under the Government of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, especially when the Canadian constitution was revised without the agreement of the Quebec Government and when Trudeau introduced the National Energy Policy. The divisions within the nation were reflected in the tensions between Western and Eastern Canada and between English and French-speaking Canadians. The Labour movement and Quebec separatists had been driven to revolt. In the Mulroney government’s eyes, Canada had to rebrand and reinvent itself, at home, and on the world stage. Mulroney’s Speeches from the Throne It was in the Throne Speech of 1984 that the Mulroney government first outlined their vision for the reinvention of the Canadian identity and the ways in which they would rebuild Canadian unity. This would be no easy task, as it would require fixing the deep divisions between all Canadians. However, the Mulroney government was committed to doing this through the reinvention that they had promis