"We created the Cabinet Committee on the Environment to review the environmental implications of all government initiatives. I think what made us successful was the fact that it was a sustained approach. We did something new every year"
About this Quote
Mulroney is quietly bragging about something politicians rarely brag about: bureaucracy as moral technology. The line isn’t soaring rhetoric; it’s managerial. That’s the point. By foregrounding a “Cabinet Committee” that reviews “all government initiatives,” he frames the environment not as a boutique issue for a single ministry, but as a filter through which power itself must pass. The intent is to claim institutional redesign as legacy: not one marquee bill, but a system that forces every file to answer an ecological question.
The subtext is defensive and tactical. Mulroney knew environmental policy is easy to announce and hard to keep, because it collides with jobs, resource extraction, and federal-provincial turf wars. “Sustained approach” signals durability against the normal life cycle of political attention: crisis, press conference, amnesia. He’s also drawing a contrast with governments that treat climate and conservation as episodic campaigns. The phrase “we did something new every year” is a shrewd metric for seriousness; it implies momentum, iteration, and a willingness to be graded annually rather than on election day.
Context matters. Mulroney governed as free trade and deregulation rewired Canada’s economy, and his government was still associated with big environmental wins of the era: acid rain diplomacy with the U.S., the Montreal Protocol’s ozone protections, and the creation and expansion of parks. This quote repositions those successes as products of process, not luck or personality. It’s a reminder that in a system built to forget, continuity is its own kind of radicalism.
The subtext is defensive and tactical. Mulroney knew environmental policy is easy to announce and hard to keep, because it collides with jobs, resource extraction, and federal-provincial turf wars. “Sustained approach” signals durability against the normal life cycle of political attention: crisis, press conference, amnesia. He’s also drawing a contrast with governments that treat climate and conservation as episodic campaigns. The phrase “we did something new every year” is a shrewd metric for seriousness; it implies momentum, iteration, and a willingness to be graded annually rather than on election day.
Context matters. Mulroney governed as free trade and deregulation rewired Canada’s economy, and his government was still associated with big environmental wins of the era: acid rain diplomacy with the U.S., the Montreal Protocol’s ozone protections, and the creation and expansion of parks. This quote repositions those successes as products of process, not luck or personality. It’s a reminder that in a system built to forget, continuity is its own kind of radicalism.
Quote Details
| Topic | Vision & Strategy |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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