Mulroney 1979

What if Brian Mulroney won the 1976 PC leadership election and goes on to win the 1979 Canadian election? Let's say he wins a majority . What PoD would be needed to make this happen? How would Mulroney do as PM 5 years earlier? What would be the effects? How would this alter Canadian politics?
 
On economics. The OTL Mulroney government was unable to either raise taxes (hence the GST of the 1990s) or reduce spending (also see the 1990s) and so the deficit—mostly on increasing and compounding interest costs on loans—rapidly increased from a large base.

A Tory government in 1979 would be spared Trudeau's last half decade of wasted (sigh, so many useful things it could have spent on) and huge spending. However said Tory government would also be likely to increase spending, albeit slower than Trudeau, and of course some hard choices Clark and Crosbie made would be far less likely under Mulroney.

The Referendum of course is another obvious point of discussion, alongside all kinds of potential constitutional questions.
 
On the constitutional front, by 1979 you wouldn't have had repatriation and the attendant "back-stab" of Quebec, so I wonder whether the Tories would do as well in Quebec as they did in OTL 1984.

And at the risk of sliding into Great Man Theory here, I question whether a non-Pierre Elliot Trudeau prime minister, even a Liberal, would have brought the constitution home, much less added a Charter Of Rights. So, assuming PET doesn't re-appear in federal politics after Mulroney leaves, this could butterfly away a lot of constitutional history.
 
On the constitutional front, by 1979 you wouldn't have had repatriation and the attendant "back-stab" of Quebec, so I wonder whether the Tories would do as well in Quebec as they did in OTL 1984.

And at the risk of sliding into Great Man Theory here, I question whether a non-Pierre Elliot Trudeau prime minister, even a Liberal, would have brought the constitution home, much less added a Charter Of Rights. So, assuming PET doesn't re-appear in federal politics after Mulroney leaves, this could butterfly away a lot of constitutional history.
Well, it IS a bit silly for a modern country to have its Constitution be an act of legislation of a different country.

I'm pretty sure that it would have been repatriated at some point, by someone, probably not TOO much later than iOTL. Since Québec is likely to refuse to sign on to any plausible constitiution, it's likely going to be without their support, and thus still a 'stab in the back'.

So I don't know that the constitutional mess would be a whole lot different, in gross generality, than OTL.
 
And at the risk of sliding into Great Man Theory here, I question whether a non-Pierre Elliot Trudeau prime minister, even a Liberal, would have brought the constitution home, much less added a Charter Of Rights. So, assuming PET doesn't re-appear in federal politics after Mulroney leaves, this could butterfly away a lot of constitutional history.

I do believe the Constitution will be patriated eventually. However, the Charter likely won't exist, and that will deeply affect Canada.
 
On the constitutional front, by 1979 you wouldn't have had repatriation and the attendant "back-stab" of Quebec, so I wonder whether the Tories would do as well in Quebec as they did in OTL 1984.

They certainly would not clean up as completely as they did in '84, but by '79 Trudeau had long since worn out his welcome. The Tories' '79 campaign probably wouldn't have to have been that much better than OTL for them to win a majority. At the very least, the postulated scenario greatly benefits Canada by preventing Trudeau from getting back in in '80.

And at the risk of sliding into Great Man Theory here, I question whether a non-Pierre Elliot Trudeau prime minister, even a Liberal, would have brought the constitution home, much less added a Charter Of Rights. So, assuming PET doesn't re-appear in federal politics after Mulroney leaves, this could butterfly away a lot of constitutional history.

I'm pretty sure that one of the governments in the '80s (or possibly the early '90s) would have, be it Tory or Liberal. OTOH they probably would have done a better job of it than Trudeau did. To start they certainly would not have included the Charter, and that alone would have been a significant improvement on what we got.
 
On another note, I'd expect this to also affect the 1980 referendum. Trudeau's strategy of campaigning hard for unity was very different from Clark's apathetic policy. Mulroney is likely going to condone the referendum even further, and this has a real chance of leading to the Yes side winning. This will, in short, screw Canada.
 
I think that Mulroney might find it easier to achieve most of his policies starting in 1979 rather than in 1984. For one thing His economic policies are largely responsible for helping Canada lift itself out of the economic mess that Trudeau left us in. His policies were continued and expanded under the Chretien government to great success and in terms of economic policy he's probably the single most underrated PM in Canadian history (This article makes a great case for that claim http://policyoptions.irpp.org/magaz...trudeau-leaves-a-legacy-of-deficits-and-debt/). Plus in 1979, the debt wasn't as out of hand as it was in 1984 when he took office in the OTL. the Lions share of debt incurred by the Chretien and Mulroney governments between 1984-1995 was because of the debt transfer payments on the massive Trudeau debt. Even with Mulroney's first budget, his government increased revenues and reduced expenditure, but still ran a record deficit because of the debt payments. Mulroney also ran operational surpluses continuously from 1987-1993, but the debt payments were still too big (not to mention the early 90s recession hitting the Canadian economy at the same time, which also attributed to the debt). Canada wasn't able to pay down its mountain of debt until the 1995 budget cuts under the Chretien government, which finally allowed Canada to put its books in order. the Mulroney government was unable to do these cuts while they were in power mainly because of the backlash that the austerity would cause (regardless of its long term benefits). the Liberals in comparison were in an ideal position to get away with it due to the opposition being in shatters and there being no real threat to the Liberals losing in 1997 or 2000.

In 1979 however, Canada was in a slightly better economic position than it was in 1984 with a smaller level of government spending to contend with. Putting all of this into account and without having to deal with the wreckage left behind after the NEP or the gigantic debt accumulation of the Trudeau government from 1980-1984, Mulroney would likely be able to accomplish much more and leave Canada in a stronger economic position during the 80s and 90s, with a smaller federal debt, more growth and some possible surpluses (depending on how much more sustainable the debt transfer payments were to deal with in 1979). If Mulroney doesn't have to continuously borrow to finance the debt, then he's going to run successive surpluses at least until the early 90s recession hits.

In terms of the Quebec Referendum. In The Original Timeline, The no side won by a large margin (almost 20%) It's unlikely that there'd be any chance of The Yes side winning that Referendum to the point of verging on to the absurd. So i think that fjihr's suggestions about the referendum are logically unfounded.
 
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