Talk:Brian Mulroney

Airbus/Schreiber affair

Looking to replace the entire "Airbus/Schreiber affair" section with the section below. The current live section is outdated and needs updating. Happy to work with the Wikipedia team to get this updated. Thank you.

Airbus/Schreiber affair

On September 29, 1995, the Canadian Department of Justice, acting on behalf of the RCMP, sent a Letter of Request to the Swiss Government asking for information related to allegations that Mulroney was involved in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the Government of Canada.

The investigation pertained to “improper commissions” allegedly paid to German-Canadian businessman Karlheinz Schreiber (or to companies controlled by him), Brian Mulroney and former Newfoundland premier Frank Moores in exchange for three government contracts.

These contracts involved the purchase of Airbus Industrie aircraft by Air Canada; the purchase of helicopters by the Canadian Coast Guard from Messerschmitt-Bolkow-Blohm GmbH (MBB) in 1986; and the establishment of a manufacturing plant for Thyssen Light Armoured Vehicles (Bear Head Project) in the province of Nova Scotia, a project which Mulroney as prime minister had cancelled.

This Letter of Request (LOR) “and its contents were to be kept confidential” but the letter was leaked to the media and excerpts were published in a Financial Post story by Philip Mathias on November 18, 1995 under the headline: “Justice seeks evidence on Mulroney, Moores: Mulroney denies any connection with alleged payoffs over $1.8-billion Airbus deal.” The entire letter was never published.

As a result, Mulroney launched a $50 million libel lawsuit against the Government of Canada and the RCMP on November 20, 1995.

Gérald Tremblay, one of the former prime minister’s lawyers, said the damage to Mulroney’s reputation was “absolutely incalculable.” Mulroney, speaking through his lawyers, said that these were not only “false and reckless allegations” against him but also were “besmirching and distorting the good name of Canada.”

Settlement

On January 5, 1997, Mr. Mulroney agreed to an out-of-court settlement with the Government of Canada and the RCMP.

In the Settlement Agreement, the Government of Canada and the RCMP acknowledged "that any conclusions of wrongdoing by the former Prime Minister were – and are – unjustified..." and, as a result, "the Government of Canada and the RCMP regret any damage suffered by Mr. Mulroney and his family and fully apologize to them."

On April 17, 2003, RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli, wrote to Mulroney saying that he was no longer under investigation. In his “hand-delivered letter” , he stated:

“On April 22, 2003, the RCMP will announce that after an exhaustive investigation in Canada and abroad, the remaining 1995 allegations of wrongdoing involving MBB Helicopters, Thyssen and Airbus has concluded and that the outstanding allegations cannot be substantiated."

Commissioner Zaccardelli’s letter formally ended the eight-year investigation into the “Airbus affair.”

Payments

On November 10, 2003, The Globe and Mail published an article by Toronto-based lawyer and author William Kaplan under the headline: “Schreiber hired Mulroney.”

Kaplan wrote that Mulroney had entered into a commercial relationship with Mr. Schreiber after leaving office and that this fact had been known since 2000. He said that the information was contained in an unpublished story by award-winning National Post reporter Philip Mathias.

Kaplan quoted Mathias as having written: “Brian Mulroney was paid $300,000 in cash by German businessman Karlheinz Schreiber, the man at the centre of the Airbus affair, over an 18-month period beginning soon after Mulroney stepped down as prime minister in 1993.”

Kaplan also wrote in this Globe and Mail article that the story by Mathias “made it clear that the payments had nothing to do with Airbus, or any of the wrongdoing asserted in the 1995 letter of request.”

In 2007, Mulroney testified before the Commons ethics committee that the amount of the “retainer” totalled $225,000, not $300,000. Specifically, he said “it was $75,000 a year for three years' work.”

Inquiry

In March 2007, Karlheinz Schreiber, a businessman with dual German-Canadian citizenship who was under investigation by German authorities and in the process of being extradited from Canada, launched a civil lawsuit against Mulroney for breach of contract. This was 14 years after Mulroney and Schreiber had entered into their consulting agreement and eight years after this agreement had ended.

In an affidavit sworn on November 7, 2007, Schreiber alleged that Mulroney had been paid $300,000 but had “never provided the services as promised.” Schreiber also swore that Mulroney had allegedly “agreed to help establish a light armoured vehicle facility in Nova Scotia or Quebec.” This lawsuit was subsequently dismissed by the Ontario Superior Court.

On November 9, 2007, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that he was mandating “an independent and impartial third party to review what course of actions may be appropriate given Mr. Schreiber’s new sworn allegations.”

On November 14, 2007, Prime Minister Harper appointed Professor David Johnston, the president and vice-chancellor of the University of Waterloo “to conduct an impartial review of allegations” regarding the “financial dealings” between Mulroney and Schreiber “in order to make to make recommendations for an appropriate mandate for a public inquiry.” Johnston submitted his report on January 9, 2008.

The next day, The Globe and Mail reported that Schreiber has “lost another bid to stave off extradition to Germany to face fraud, bribery and tax-evasion charges when the Ontario's Court of Appeal ruled against him.”

This newspaper article quoted Reinhard Nemetz, a prosecutor in southern Germany, who reportedly said that it was his “duty to bring him (Schreiber) to trial in Germany” and added that the “delaying tactics” that Schreiber had been “using since 1999” were “remarkable.”

Meanwhile, Schreiber’s allegations also led to a House of Commons ethics committee hearing. “The committee held hearings from 29 November 2007 to 25 February 2008 and, in addition to the testimony of 12 witnesses over 27 hours of hearings, received a significant amount of documentation from its various witnesses.”

This public inquiry into the Mulroney-Schreiber affair chaired by Liberal MP Paul Szabo released its report in April 2008 and made no finding of wrongdoing on the part of Mulroney or Schreiber related to their business dealings, which began after Mulroney had left office.

The report said that committee’s mandate had been “‘to examine whether there were violations of ethical and code of conduct standards by any office holder” and found no such “ethics or code conduct violations.”

It also “found no evidence of any wrong-doing by any public official.”

The committee recommended that a commissioner be appointed by the government and for this individual to “be granted a broad mandate to inquire into the Mulroney-Schreiber Affair.”

Conclusion

Pursuant to an Order in Council dated June 12, 2008, Justice Jeffrey Oliphant was mandated to conduct an inquiry into certain allegations respecting business and financial dealings between Mulroney and Schreiber. On May 31, 2010, Justice Oliphant submitted his report.

It examined Mulroney’s relationship with Schreiber while he was prime minister with respect to the purchase of Airbus aircraft by Air Canada in 1988, the Bear Head Project, and the procurement by the Canadian Coast Guard of MBB helicopters.

Justice Oliphant concluded that there was “no evidence that, while he was a public office holder – that is, the prime minister – he received from Mr. Schreiber a benefit that could influence him in his judgment and performance of his official duties."

Specifically with respect to the Airbus accusations, Justice Oliphant said that the “only way to link” Mulroney to the Airbus affair “is to speculate or to endorse the concept of guilt by association.”

As a trial judge with 25 years of experience based on “fairness,” he said that he was “not prepared to indulge in either."

On August 3, 2009, Schreiber was deported to Germany after exhausting “every legal option to escape extradition to his homeland” for a decade.

On Nov 14, 2013, he was convicted of tax evasion and sentenced to a six-and-a-half-year prison term.

Digitalside (talk) 13:31, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

References

I've drastically trimmed the section (it was too heavily weighted in the article, and much of the content is duplicated at Airbus affair anyway). The problem is that we basically have two POV versions of this section; the one in the article history, which seeks to paint Mulroney as a criminal, and the one above, which seeks to exonerate him of any wrongdoing. The truth is probably somewhere in between. Anyone is welcome to re-insert text from either here or the history if they believe that it adds to the reader's understanding of Mulroney and complies with WP:BLP and WP:NPOV, or expand the section anew if you wish. Leaving the edit request open in case any interested parties happen by as a result. Yunshui ^雲_水 09:14, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

 Additional information needed Regarding edits to semi-protected pages, WP:EDITREQ states in part, that editors ought to implement changes:

Which are already supported by a consensus of editors, usually on the semi-protected page's talkpage. Please do not add the {{edit protected}} template merely to attract attention to the change, as it clutters up the relevant edit request category with unactionable requests. If consensus is required for the change and you would like the request to be acted on sooner, please indicate a clear consensus rather than requiring the editor to read pages of discussion.

Your proposal asks for an entire section on the Airbus affair to be replaced. Is there consensus for this change to be made? You mentioned in your request that: "The problem is we basically have two POV versions of this section; the one in the article history, which seeks to paint Mulroney as a criminal, and the one above, which seeks to exonerate him of any wrongdoing. The truth is probably somewhere in between." I hope you're not expecting the COI edit request system to be arbiter of that truth. Please advise.  Spintendo  ᔦᔭ  05:16, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure whether you're addressing me or User:Digitalside here, so I'll respond to the bits of your comment that appear to relate to my actions and you can always clarify later. No, I do not expect the edit request system to be the arbiter of truth; we are not especially interested in the "truth". My comment was intended to indicate that there are two sides to every story, and in this case we were giving undue weight to one side only. The fact that the section (on which we already have a wholly separate article) made up about an eighth of the article's text also suggested that it went into too much detail. Had I been aware of the article prior to the edit request, I suspect I would still have substantially trimmed the section, consensus or no.

The same reasoning also applies to a blanket replacement of the section with Digitalside's version, which I think goes too far the other way and gives undue weight to exonerating Mulroney. Our job is to be neutral. As such, stripping the section down to the (at the time of writing) current version seemed like a good compromise. Yunshui ^雲_水 09:57, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

Major achievements in the first paragraph

The effective destruction of the oldest political party in Canada needs to be in the first paragraph. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.51.29.60 (talk) 20:41, 11 September 2018 (UTC)

The Progressive Conservative Party, which Mulroney led, was not the oldest party in Canada. The PC's formed in 1942 as an amalgamation of the Conservative Party and the Progressive Party. The Liberal Party of Canada is the only extant Federal party in Canada with an origin that predates Confederation. Mediatech492 (talk) 02:05, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

Edit request

“Mulroney's second term was marked by an economic recession. He proposed the introduction of a visible 7%[1] national sales tax, the Goods and Services Tax (GST). When it was introduced in 1991, it replaced the hidden 13.5% Manufacturers' Sales Tax (MST)[2], which was previously applied to goods manufactured in Canada.

REMOVE the following line as unsourced information: "Fiscal conservatives likewise did not approve of Mulroney's tax increases and his failure to curtail expansion of "big government" programs…patronage."

REPLACE it with these lines: Mulroney was a fierce advocate for free enterprise, small government[3] conservatism. His government privatized or dissolved 39 Crown Corporations, eliminated or consolidated 41 agencies, boards, and commissions, removing 90,000 jobs from the federal government payroll. His government also deregulated the energy, transport, telecommunications[4], and financial industries.[5]

The federal deficit was virtually cut in half from the 8.7% of GDP the Mulroney government inherited in 1984-85 to 4.6% of GDP in 1990-91. All of the deficits and increases in the national debt from the time Mr. Mulroney took office until he resigned in 1993 were attributable to interest on the debt that existed before his government came to office.[6]

According to the Fraser Institute[7], Mulroney recorded average annual per-person spending declines of 0.3 per cent, one of only two prime ministers in Canadian history to have done so.[8]

Former Bloc Québécois leader Michel Gauthier considered Brian Mulroney to be the greatest prime minister Canada has known in the last 50 years due to its political projects taken by him such as Meech Lake accord, the fight against apartheid, an economic project, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and a fiscal project, which was to put the finances of the state back in order, and also pointed out that there was no constitutional quarrel between the federal and Quebec Government.[14]

AFTER the line above, ADD this line: In 1993, two professors from McGill University’s North American Studies Program determined that Mulroney had the best economic record of any Prime Minister since World War II.[9] In 2003, a survey by the Institute for Research on Public Policy placed Mulroney 2nd in a ranking of the best prime ministers of the previous 50 years.[10]

1 - https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/the-gst-hated-by-many-stands-the-test-of-time/article560699/ 2 - https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-09-19-fi-332-story.html 3 - https://policyoptions.irpp.org/2015/12/01/harper/ 4 - https://sencanada.ca/en/content/sen/chamber/362/debates/021db_1999-12-14-e 5 - https://nationalpost.com/opinion/charlie-mayer-liberals-should-take-a-cue-from-mulroney-not-chretien 6 - https://nationalpost.com/opinion/opinion-harpers-new-book-got-it-wrong-about-mulroney 7 - https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/prime-ministers-govt-spending-2019.pdf 8 - https://nationalpost.com/opinion/opinion-harpers-new-book-got-it-wrong-about-mulroney 9 - https://mcgill.ca/economics/files/economics/foreward_to_the_man_to_beat.pdf 10 - https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/the-best-pms-in-the-past-50-years/the-best-prime-minister-of-the-last-50-years-pearson-by-a-landslide/

Business Leadership

REMOVE the following line as unsourced information: “Under his leadership, the company was sold off to foreign interests.”

Party Leader

REMOVE the following line as unsourced information: “The new Prime Minister's handlers were concerned by apparent unpredictability and rumours of drinking.” First Mandate (1984-1988)

REMOVE the following line as unsourced information: “Gandhi replied that he should be the one providing condolences to Mulroney, given that the majority of victims were Canadian or lived in Canada. Many Indo-Canadians considered this to be a racist act because they felt Mulroney did not consider them to be true Canadian citizens as they were not of European descent.[citation needed]”

Second Mandate (1988-1983)

“In 1984, he had promised to increase the military budget and the regular force to 92,000 troops, but the budget was cut and the troop level fell to below 80,000 by 1993.” 

AFTER the line above, ADD these lines: During Mulroney’s almost nine years as prime minister, Canada lived up to its NATO obligation and spent 2% of GDP on defense.[11] No other government since then has spent more than 1.4%.”[12] [13] Also, during those nine years, Canada took a lead role in United Nations peacekeeping by participating in 16 peacekeeping and observation missions 16 times in 9 years.[14] During the Cold War, Canada was the only country to be a part of every UN peacekeeping operation.[15] Canada provided 80,000 peacekeepers, a full 10 percent of the UN total. When Mulroney announced his intention to resign as prime minister in early 1993, there were 3336 Canadian peacekeepers[16]. As of July 31st 2019, there were 150.”[17]

11 - https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS?locations=CA 12 - https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/pdf_2000_12/20100614_p00-107e.pdf 13 - https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/pdf_2019_06/20190625_PR2019-069-EN.pdf 14 - http://www.canadiansoldiers.com/history/peacekeeping/peacekeeping.htm 15 - http://natoassociation.ca/the-fall-of-canadian-peacekeeping-should-it-be-revived/ 16 - https://peacekeeping.un.org/sites/default/files/apr-1993.pdf 17 - https://peacekeeping.un.org/sites/default/files/apr-1993.pdf

Retirement REMOVE the following line as unsourced information: Another sign came before Meech Lake was finalized, when Bouchard resigned from both the cabinet and the party over changes to the proposal that he felt diluted its spirit. REPLACE it with this sourced line: Another sign came when Mulroney was negotiating the Meech Lake Accord in 1990. Bouchard “sent a telegram of support to the Parti Québecois and declared he was a sovereigntist,”[18] prompting Mulroney to fire him from cabinet.[19] REMOVE the following line as unsourced information: Brian and Mila Mulroney's new private residence in Montreal was undergoing renovations, and they did not move out of 24 Sussex until their new home was ready. REPLACE it in paragraph with this sourced line:

Also, by the time he handed power to Campbell, there were five months (The Constitution Act of 1867 fixes the maximum life of a federal parliament at five years following the return of the writs of election.[20] The writs of the 1988 election were returned on November 21, 1988[21]. Campbell became prime minister on June 25, 1993[22]) left in the Tories' five-year mandate. The Mulroney family vacated 24 Sussex on June 15th, 1993, 10 days before Prime Minister Mulroney left office[23]. Campbell had taken up residence at Harrington Lake, the Prime Minister's official summer retreat across the river in Gatineau Park, Quebec. She had planned to move in only if she won the election.[24]

REMOVE line below as unsourced information and not attributed to a reliable source “In his final days in office, Mulroney made several decisions that hampered the Tory campaign later that year. He took a lavish international "farewell" tour[54] mostly at taxpayers' expense, without transacting any official business.” REPLACE it with this sourced line: In his final weeks in office, Mulroney took an international tour, visiting the leaders of Russia, Germany, Britain and France holding talks on the Yugoslav civil war to which Canada had deployed 2,000 peacekeepers, and other important diplomatic issues with the leaders in respect of the upcoming G-7 meeting[25]

18 - https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/lucien-bouchard-says-wounds-remain-with-brian-mulroney-1.2742836 19 - https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/bouchard-was-fired-in-1990-mulroney-insists-on-tapes/article20429938/ 20 - https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=res&dir=ces&document=part1&lang=e 21 - https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/election-1988-feature 22 - https://www.cbc.ca/archives/kim-campbell-becomes-canada-s-first-woman-prime-minister-1.4674672 23 - https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1993/06/15/canadas-new-leader-faces-pressing-tasks/82f971d1-77b7-4c0f-ae8f-4a1fc15cd094/ 24 - http://www.kimcampbell.com/timeline 25 - https://apnews.com/b0ac1cff1f85a23a36112393c5632972

After politics

In 2014, Mulroney became the chairman of Quebecor and defused tensions resulting from the continuing influence of former President and CEO Pierre Karl Péladeau. On December 5, 2018, Mulroney presented a eulogy for former U.S. President George H. W. Bush during the latter's state funeral. AFTER the lines above, ADD this line: In 2019, St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia inaugurated the Brian Mulroney Institute of Government, a $100-million initiative designed to provide undergraduates – sustained by a large scholarship program – with degrees in public policy and governance.[26]

Airbus/Schreiber Affair

“On January 5, 1997, Mr. Mulroney agreed to an out-of-court settlement with the Government of Canada and the RCMP.” AFTER the line above, ADD these lines: In the settlement agreement, the Government of Canada and the RCMP agreed to pay Mr. Mulroney $ 2.1 million to reimburse him for costs incurred in defending himself against their libelous claims against him.[27] As part of that Settlement the RCMP and the Government of Canada acknowledged “that any conclusions of wrongdoing by the former Prime Minister were – and are – unjustified. The Government of Canada and the RCMP regret any damage suffered by Mr. Mulroney and his family and fully apologize to them.”[28]

Honours ADD: Haiti – Grand-Croix de l’Ordre national Honneur et Mérite (1994)[29]

Honorary degrees ADD: Location: Quebec, Date: Tuesday, June 6, 2017, School: McGill University, Degree: Doctor of Laws[30] Location: Quebec Date: June 3, 2016 School: University of Montreal Degree: Honorary PhD[31] Location: Turkey Date: June 25, 2010 School: KOÇ University Degree: Honorary Doctorate[32] Location: Israel Date: 1994 School: University of Tel Aviv Degree: Honorary Doctor of Philosophy[33] Location: Barbados Date: October 23, 1993 School: University of the West Indies Degree: Honorary Doctorate[34] Remove May 3, 2015 from line below as inaccurate information. The honorary degree was awarded in 1978 Location: Nova Scotia Date: 1978 School: St. Francis Xavier University Degree: Honorary Doctorate

26 - https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-100-million-brian-mulroney-institute-of-government-opens-at-former/ 27 - https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/mulroney-deserved-libel-settlement-spokesman-1.960549 28 - https://www.ourcommons.ca/DocumentViewer/en/36-1/JURI/meeting-19/evidence 29 - https://pdinstitute.uottawa.ca/en/page/prime-minister-series-featured-speakers-and-panelists 30 - https://www.mcgill.ca/newsroom/channels/news/mcgill-honorary-doctorates-2017-267838 31 - https://nouvelles.umontreal.ca/en/article/2016/06/01/udem-to-present-honorary-doctorates-to-brian-mulroney-elizabeth-cannon-and-calvin/ 32 - http://www.gif.org.tr/events/roundtable-with-right-honourable-brian-mulroney 33 - http://www3.tau.ac.il/honorary/ 34 - https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/485475593/

Other awards: ADD: Mulroney was inducted into the Canadian Disability Hall of Fame in 2018 for having created the ‘Disabled Persons Participation Program.[35] Mulroney received the George Bush Award in 2018 for Excellence in Public Service.[36] Mulroney received the James A. Baker lll Prize in 2019 for Excellence in Leadership.[37] Mulroney was awarded the Canadian Club of Toronto Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019 - “an award that celebrates the lifelong efforts and leadership of extraordinary Canadians.”[38] Mulroney was presented with the Global Leadership Award[39] by Global Canada and the Canadian International Council in 2019, recognizing him as “the Canadian political leader with the greatest international impact in the last 50 years.”[40] Mulroney received the Environmental Leadership Award from Pollution Probe at their 50th Anniversary gathering in Toronto in 2019.”[41] “This award “honours those whose work and dedication have shaped and defined Canada’s environmental landscape.”[42]

35 - http://www.ccdonline.ca/en/publications/voice/2016/Special-Edition 36 - https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/2018-george-bush-award-for-excellence-in-public-service-presented-to-former-canadian-prime-minister-brian-mulroney-300722136.html 37 - https://www.bakerinstitute.org/events/2000/ 38 - https://www.mediaevents.ca/canadianclub-20190604/ 39 - https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/mulroney-on-trudeau-s-relationship-with-trump-canada-s-role-in-the-world-1.4659988 40 - https://www.tvanouvelles.ca/2019/11/05/brian-mulroney-honore-pour-sa-contribution-sur-la-scene-internationale 41 - https://www.pollutionprobe.org/gala/2019-pollution-probe-environmental-leadership-award/ 42 - https://www.wireservice.ca/index.php?module=News&func=display&sid=25151

Digitalside (talk) 19:12, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

​Your will have to attach sources, you've currently only posted plain text in brackets. You can copy the article over to your sandbox to make it easier to manage citations, there you can edit it and then link here to your proposed version. Would reword "fierce advocate for free enterprise" (WP:PUFFERY). – Thjarkur (talk) 08:48, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

(Noting that sources have now been added) – Thjarkur (talk) 21:04, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

Hi @Digitalside: I have started to assess your edits and added notes below based on the reference number or a description of the information. Although some edits appear to have been implemented, I took a second look to ensure they were the best additions and to add sources. I was not able to finish the edit in one session, so I will continue at a later date.

1)  Not done per WP:RSEDITORIAL, opinion pieces are not considered reliable sources for statements of fact.

2)  Done with rewording.

3)  Partly done Fiscal Conservatives... sentence was removed because it was unsourced. I could not find the information in the source that verified this sentence. Can you quote the section below?

4)  Not done This is a transcript of a debate between Senators and has no editorial oversight. Another source needs to be provided to verify this information.

5)  Not done This is an opinion piece. See #1.

6)  Not done Another opinion piece.

7)  Not done I do not think this is notable enough to include in the legacy section.

8)  Not done Opinion piece

9)  Not done What does "having the best economic record" mean? This needs to be explained.

10)  Not done This survey was of 30 people, albeit well-informed people, so I don't think this is a representative result.

Business Leadership:  Done removed statement, as it doesn't outline Mulroney's participation in this decision.

Party Leader 1:  Done removed statement as unsourced.

Those are my first round of comments. Other editors may also comment and continue this review if they wish. Z1720 (talk) 03:34, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Round 2 by Z1720

Party Leader 2:  Done The three sources listed (ref 37, 38, 39) did not verify this information.

11)  Not done per WP:SYNTH. The reference indicates level of GDP on military in Canada, but does not mention NATO commitments.

12 and 13)  Not done WP:SYNTH and these are primary documents. This information should be verified by a secondary source.

14)  Not done This is not a reliable source

15)  Not done This information is not specific to Mulroney, so it does not belong here.

16)  Not done Mulroney was not involved in the decline of peacekeepers so it doesn't belong here.

More comments later. Z1720 (talk) 03:30, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Round 3 by Z1720

17)  Not done since it relies on the pervious sentences.

18) and 19)  Done with some copyediting

20), 21), 22)  Not done Unnecessary detail.

23)  Not done source does not verify this info.

24)  Not done A primary source should not be used to verify this information.

25)  Not done I do not have the Donaldson reference, but even the reference you provided called the tour a "farewell tour" Instead of replacing the info I have included the reference you provided and reworded it to fit the AP reference.

26)  Done Added in the legacy section with some edits.

More comments later. Z1720 (talk) 03:25, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Round 4

27)  Partly done The source is speaking about findings of the Oliphant Commission Report and the sentence proposed for this section did not reflect the information in the source and was biased. I included the reference but changed the prose to reflect what is reported in the source.

28)  Not done As it adds detail that is not needed.

29)  Not done Not a reliable source. If a new source is provided it can be reevaluated for inclusion.

30)  Done

31)  Done by another editor

32)  Not done not a reliable source

33)  Done

34)  Maybe I do not have access to this site yet, but I have requested access through Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Library. If it is approved I will look at this source.

StFX info: I took out the info because the source didn't state he got an honourary degree in 2015. A source will need to verify his honourary degree in 1978.

35)  Partly done The source doesn't specify why he won the honour so I left the second part of the sentence out.

36)  Done With some copyediting.

37), 38), 39), 40), 41), 42)  Not done Generally if Wikipedia doesn't have an article on the award, I don't consider winning the award notable, and thus I do not include it per WP:INDISCRIMINATE

That's it! I have closed this ticket as answered. Please post below if you have additional sources, things you want to add or have any questions. Z1720 (talk) 21:49, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

NPOV - "interfered with abortion laws"

Having a discussion about the phrase "This was the last time the federal government attempted to interfere with abortion laws". I think it's NPOV, for two reasons:

• 1. Laws are made by Parliament. They're not some external thing, that exist independent of Parliament. Parliament enacts the laws, Parliament amends the laws, Parliament repeals the laws. That's the constitutional function of Parliament. The phrasing "interfere with" suggests that somehow, laws are separate and apart from Parliament and it's inappropriate for Parliament to amend them. That's not correct, either constitutionally or politically. Parliament sets the criminal laws, the bankruptcy laws, the customs laws. If Parliament chooses to amend a federal law, that is not "interference".
• 2. "interfere with" is inherently a value statement, not a statement of fact. It suggests that it is not appropriate for Parliament to enact an abortion law. Wikipedia needs to be neutral on that point. Some people may believe that Parliament should not introduce an abortion law; others may believe that Parliament should introduce an abortion law. "Interfere with" implicitly states that Parliament should not amend the abortion law, and that is a political statement, not a statement of fact. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 12:39, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

Your second point makes a lot of sense. Thanks for clearing that up. Ak-eater06 (talk) 20:55, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

Universities in the infobox

MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE provides:

When considering any aspect of infobox design, keep in mind the purpose of an infobox: to summarize (and not supplant) key facts that appear in the article ... The less information it contains, the more effectively it serves that purpose, allowing readers to identify key facts at a glance. Of necessity, some infoboxes contain more than just a few fields; however, wherever possible, present information in short form, and exclude any unnecessary content.

That being the case, I have doubts as to whether Mulroney's attendance at Dalhousie University (from which he received no degree) qualifies as a "key fact" about the subject. His enrolment there has no connection to his notability and he didn't even attend the school for a full year. His attendance in the first two-thirds of the year was sporadic at best; John Sawatsky attributes his absence to political business and late-night socializing. And in February he came down with a terrible unknown illness (which led to hospitalization) causing him to miss most of the rest of the year.

While that is undoubtedly interesting trivia about Mulroney's early life, those few months of his life hardly make the cut for a high-level summary of the topic.

The central consensus on the matter of including universities from which the subject did not graduate in biographical infoboxes is documented in the documentation for {{Infobox person}}: It is usually not relevant to include [the education or alma_mater parameters] for non-graduates, but article talk page consensus may conclude otherwise, as perhaps at Bill Gates. Bill Gates's time at Harvard helped develop his technical skills, led to his relationship with Steve Ballmer, and, most importantly, is generally viewed as a core part of the popular narrative around Gates – i.e., that he dropped out of the most prestigious university in America to start a tech company that would ultimately make him the wealthiest person in the world. Brian Mulroney's time at Dalhousie, however, was relatively uneventful and is not commonly known. It's obviously sufficiently noteworthy to warrant inclusion in the article, but it's certainly not a "key fact" about his life.

As the MOS mandates that infoboxes be designed around "key facts", omitting extraneous information, and there exists a central consensus that universities from which the subject didn't graduate should be omitted from the infobox barring exceptional circumstances, I would propose that we remove the reference to Dalhousie from the infobox. Graham (talk) 06:25, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

References

Chart of Seats after the election

The chart of seats in the House of Commons is badly in need of a legend associating the colours with parties.Bill (talk) 21:13, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

@Billposer: Done! Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 03:16, 3 March 2024 (UTC)