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The incoming federal government has the strongest mandate since the election of Brian Mulroney 31 years ago; as Jean Chrétien won elections that were contested by five parties that would have been cliff-hangers if the opposition had been as consolidated as it became after he was ousted by his own party; and Stephen Harper had a (thin) majority for only one term. And although the Liberals were not overly specific in their program, and as usual, a good deal of the election platform was a melange of hopefulness and unrigorous arithmetic, this government may be the first since the Mulroney era to have a comprehensive reform aptitude.

Brian Mulroney facilitated the fiscal prudence that followed him by reducing income taxes and instituting the Goods and Services Tax, which respects what people have earned and by taxing what they spend, creates a more voluntary system of revenue collection and encourages savings and investment. He put through Free Trade with the United States, which temporarily profoundly integrated Canada in the U.S. economy, but demonstrated that Canada could compete, and has been unambiguously successful. As China and India, countries with over 35 per cent of the world’s population, have pursued economic growth, the percentage of Canadian GDP represented by trade with the United States has appreciably declined. Mulroney tried hard to complete constitutional reform, secure Quebec’s adherence to it, and federalize the Senate and the federal courts. He was sand-bagged by Robert Bourassa’s imposition of the Notwithstanding Clause to circumvent the Supreme Court’s protection of bilingual signage in Quebec, but he did his best on an ambitious agenda. The Chrétien Liberals promised to repeal the GST and Free Trade but thought better of it; they could do whatever or as little as they wanted after Mulroney’s Progressive Conservatives disintegrated into the Reform Party, the Bloc Québécois, and the continuing Progressive Conservatives.