Whether they like it or not, Canadians are still living in the Canada that Brian Mulroney shaped, even if it isn’t exactly what he envisioned. Superficially progressive, fundamentally conservative, Mulroney sold out Canadian economic and political sovereignty to assume something of a privileged role as a vassal state to the United States. He cultivated Canada’s image of a well-meaning soft power abroad while his domestic policies undermined the country’s working and middle classes. His statecraft nurtured the retrograde populism and reactionary regionalism that not only consumed and destroyed his own party, but today forms the ideological foundation of Canada’s new conservatism.

So far, the Canadian media establishment has been unable or unwilling to write critically about Canada’s eighteenth prime minister, who passed away on February 29 at the age of eighty-four. Despite widespread praise as a statesman, as Canada’s last great prime minister, and as someone whose leadership strengths were characteristic of a more civil era of Canadian politics, the reality of Mulroney’s time in office has almost entirely escaped scrutiny.

This lack of critical coverage is indicative of the news media’s tendency to avoid challenging the political class. An instance where the Globe and Mail, Canada’s centrist national newspaper of record, labeled Mulroney as “divisive” was promptly corrected, followed up with an apology of sorts from the paper, claiming that such characterization did not meet with their editorial standards.