Statement By The Prime Minister Of Canada On Former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney Receiving South Africa’s Highest Award To A Foreign National

From the Office of Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

(A Brief Foreword Note from Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper – We can say what we want about former Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney. I still can’t forgive him for stuffing the country’s Senate chambers with a rat pack of partisan hacks and cronies, shoving the regressive Goods & Services Tax (GST) down our gullets, and negotiating a North American Free Trade Agreement that provided rocket fuel for industries to leave our country for regions south of the U.S./Mexican border where labour and environmental laws were either weak or non-existent at the time and where wages were many times lower.

Nelson Mandela visits Canada in 1990 to thank the Mulroney government and Canadian people for pressing for his release from a prison in his native South Afica

And that’s just to name a few of the items on Mulroney’s I take issue with.

Yet on one key file – that of expressing public condemnation for South Africa’s now-abolished system of racial segregation (known in that country as apartheid) and the imprisonment of civil rights icon Nelson Mandela, Brian Mulroney shone above all of his closest political allies and friends, including then-British prime minister Margaret Thatcher and U.S. president Ronald Reagan who refused to say or do a thing to end the system or win Mandela’s freedom.

Mulroney’s call-out for Mandela also sored well above the disgraceful record of Canada’s recently ousted Harper government when it came to its reluctance to speak out for Canadians, let alone other citizens of the world, imprisoned overseas, including journalist Mohamed Fahmy who was imprisoned in Egypt and Greenpeace activist and Niagara, Ontario native Paul Ruzycki who was jailed in Russia for his part in protesting Arctic oil drilling.

So I would certainly agree that the former Conservative prime minister deserves to be recognized for that one thing.)

Nelson Mandella with former prime minister Brian Mulroney during Mandela’s 1990 ‘Thank You’ visit to Canada

Ottawa, Ontario, December 2015 – The Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, issued the following statement this December 8^th on former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney receiving the Supreme Companion of O.R. Tambo award by the Government of South Africa:

“On behalf of all Canadians, Sophie and I would like to congratulate Mr. Brian Mulroney on being awarded the highest honour South Africa bestows upon foreign nationals: the Supreme Companion of Oliver Reginald Tambo award.

This prestigious award recognizes Mr. Mulroney’s exceptional contribution to South Africa’s liberation movement and his steadfast support for the release of Nelson Mandela.

“Under the leadership of Mr. Mulroney, the Government of Canada strongly opposed apartheid, a system of racial segregation in South Africa that was at the centre of political violence in the country for decades.

“Only four months after his release, Nelson Mandela travelled to Ottawa, Montréal and Toronto as a gesture of gratitude for Canada’s contribution. In 1998, Mr. Mandela became the first foreign leader to be awarded the Order of Canada. He later became the first living person to be awarded honourary Canadian citizenship in 2001.

“In Canada, diverse perspectives and different opinions are celebrated, not silenced. Canadians know that we are stronger not in spite of our differences, but because of them. I am therefore very proud of the role Mr. Mulroney and Canada played in bringing an end to apartheid and helping Mr. Mandela’s fight for freedom.

“I extend our congratulations once again to Mr. Mulroney on receiving this tremendous honour, and on showing the world that Canada champions pluralism and multiculturalism, both at home and abroad.”

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