Brian Mulroney becomes the first former Canadian prime minister to receive France’s highest civilian honour tonight, when he is inducted as a Commander of the Legion of Honour.

The ceremony, being held at the French Embassy residence on Sussex Drive, is largely in recognition of Mulroney’s role as co-founder of la Francophonie 30 years ago along with French president François Mitterrand. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is expected to attend.

Previous attempts to create a global organization of French-speaking nations had foundered over Quebec’s place at the table. In the fall of 1985, Mulroney negotiated an agreement with then-premier Pierre Marc Johnson that enabled Quebec to speak on its own behalf from within the Canadian delegation on matters of provincial jurisdiction. Officially bilingual New Brunswick was accorded the same status. The first summit of la Francophonie was held at Versailles in 1986.

“There were 31 members at the first meeting,” Mulroney recalled Monday at his Montreal law office. “Today it has expanded to 57 member states and governments, and the secretary-general, Michaëlle Jean, is a Canadian.”

Among la Francophonie’s achievements in the Mitterrand-Mulroney period was the creation of TV5, the global French-language television network, and the forgiveness of billions of dollars of debt owed by francophone countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

“It’s not very well known,” Mulroney said, “that Canada is the second most powerful francophone country in the world, just as in the Commonwealth it’s the second most important country after the U.K. in the English-speaking world.”

When Mitterrand and Mulroney first proposed African debt forgiveness, they were the only people calling for it around the G7 summit table. “When we wrote it off,” Mulroney said “we were the first industrialized country to do so. All the other G7 countries were against it.”

Since the sub-Saharan francophone states weren’t going to pay the money back anyway, Mulroney reasoned at the time, writing it off was both inevitable and the right thing to do.

“I tried,” Mulroney said, “to direct Canada’s affairs in a way that helped the country do the right thing in foreign affairs.”

And he leveraged his relationships with Mitterrand and other G7 actors to give Canada a wider role on the world stage. Today, his political legacy is defined to a surprising degree by his positions on foreign policy.

France is the fifth country to confer such an honour on this former foreign leader. The others were Haiti (the Order of National Honour and Merit in 1994), Ukraine (the Order of King Yaroslav the Wise in 2007), Japan (the Order of the Rising Sun in 2011) and South Africa (Supreme Companion of the Order of Oliver Tambo in 2015).

In Haiti, Mulroney and then-U.S. president Bill Clinton were honoured for their role in the 1994 restoration of the democratically elected government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who had been ousted in a 1991 coup.

‘We’re at the top of the mountain,’ said Mulroney, now 77. ‘But I mean that in a nice way. There’s a good feeling about life, my family, the people around me and so on. I just feel great.’ ‘We’re at the top of the mountain,’ said Mulroney, now 77. ‘But I mean that in a nice way. There’s a good feeling about life, my family, the people around me and so on. I just feel great.’

In Ukraine, Mulroney was honoured as the leader of the first country to recognize Ukraine’s independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, over the objections of the first George Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Bush was worried it would undermine Gorbachev’s leadership at home. The failed coup against Gorbachev on August 24, 1991, occurred the same day the Ukrainian parliament declared independence. Canada announced its recognition on December 2, three week before Gorbachev’s resignation on Christmas Day; the Soviet Union itself dissolved the following day.

“I told Gorbachev, ‘This is something Canada has to do,'” Mulroney said. “‘We have one of the largest Ukrainian diasporas in the world. The Ukrainians have been waiting for independence since the end of the Second World War.’” Mulroney had named Ukrainian Canadians Ray Hnatyshyn as governor general and John Sopinka to the Supreme Court; no one in the Ukrainian-Canadian community of 1.3 million has forgotten Canada’s trailblazing recognition of Ukraine’s independence.

The Japanese honoured Mulroney for advocating for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council for Japan, as well as for his role in the redress for Japanese Canadians who had lost everything and been wrongly interned in prison camps during the Second World War. Survivors filled the galleries in September 1988 when he formally apologized in the House for their ordeal, leaving hardly a dry eye in the chamber.

Mulroney said Margaret Thatcher called him to complain about his proposal to expand the P5 at the UN, and that he told her: “Margaret, what the founders did at San Francisco was right for the times. This would be right for these times. You wouldn’t lose your veto. Japan has earned it.” A major financial supporter of the UN, Japan was then the world’s second largest economy and Canada’s second largest trading partner. Mulroney also was very close in the G7 to Yasuhiro Nakasone, perhaps the most influential Japanese prime minister of the day.

In South Africa, the Tambo award is given only to foreigners; in Mulroney’s case it was to celebrate his fight against what he called “the scourge of apartheid” and the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela. From his first speech to the UN General Assembly in 1985, Mulroney notably parted company with Ronald Reagan and Thatcher, otherwise his conservative soulmates. He told Thatcher at the 1987 Commonwealth Summit in Vancouver: “Margaret, you’re on the wrong side of history.” Mitterrand was with Mulroney on the right side of history that time, as was German Chancellor Helmut Kohl.

The awarding of the Legion of Honour comes at the end of a season of honours for Mulroney and his wife Mila. In late October, they attended the announcement of the creation of the Brian Mulroney Institute of Government at his alma mater, St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia. He’s raised $60 million for a new building and scholars’ program; the Mulroneys have donated $1 million themselves as well all the administration costs.

Last week, Mila Mulroney was honoured at a dinner in Montreal for her three decades of volunteer service in the fight against cystic fibrosis, for which she has raised millions of dollars. She used to say about volunteerism, “Pick one cause and stick with it.” At the $1,000-per-couple black tie dinner for 600 people, the CF hosts announced an important benchmark of progress. Thirty years ago, CF victims lived to an average age of only 13. Today, they live an average of 53 years, thanks to breakthroughs from funded research in Canada and the U.S.

“That number just blew everyone away,” Mulroney said. Their four children and spouses were all in the room, and their son Ben was the emcee.

It’s obviously a happy time for the Mulroneys.

“We’re at the top of the mountain,” said Mulroney, now 77. “But I mean that in a nice way. There’s a good feeling about life, my family, the people around me and so on. I just feel great.”

The French are giving him one more reason to feel even better.

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