First, President Reagan was not enthusiastic. But I built up a relationship with him in other areas and then persuaded him that this was important to us and to me, and that we had to at least be in the process of looking at this seriously.

Mulroney earned a lucrative salary well into the six-figure range. The Mulroney government undertook a defence policy review publishing a new statement in late 1991 but political considerations meant that no comprehensive policy for the post-Cold War era was arrived at before the government's defeat in 1993. Indeed Mulroney made a number of unscripted gaffes regarding patronage including the reference to Ambassador Bryce Mackasey as "there's no whore like an old whore".

Prior to his political career he was a prominent lawyer and businessman in Montreal. Free Trade Agreement and the Goods and Services Tax and the rejection of constitutional reforms such as the Meech Lake Accord and the Charlottetown Accord. S.