# Brian Mulroney **Brian Mulroney** (1939–2024) was the Progressive Conservative prime minister from 1984 to 1993, who built a fragile coalition of Western conservatives and Quebec nationalists and won two of the largest majorities in Canadian history. He negotiated the Canada–U.S. Free Trade Agreement of 1988 — the precursor to NAFTA — staking his government on continental free trade, and introduced the deeply unpopular Goods and Services Tax. His attempts to bring Quebec into the constitutional fold through the Meech Lake and Charlottetown accords both collapsed. Mulroney's coalition shattered the way realignments do: the 1993 election reduced the Progressive Conservatives from governing majority to two seats, as Western conservatives bolted to [[Preston Manning]]'s [[Reform Party of Canada]] and Quebec nationalists to the Bloc Québécois. That collapse opened the long road to the modern [[Conservative Party of Canada]] and makes Mulroney the hinge between the old establishment right and the populist insurgency in the [[Canadian History Hub]]. > [!note] Stub > Phase 1 spine stub. Expand: the 1988 free-trade election, the GST, Meech Lake and Charlottetown, the 1993 PC wipeout, the later cash-in-envelopes controversy.