After Mulroney, being a 'green' PM got a lot tougher

When Brian Mulroney was given the title of Canada's «greenest prime minister» in 2006 — awarded by an expert panel convened by Corporate Knights magazine — it might have seemed like faint praise. In fact, one of the people on the panel — Jim Fulton, executive director of the David Suzuki Foundation at the time and a former NDP MP — said none of the nation's prime ministers to that point deserved the honour.

Mulroney won five of the 12 votes cast. Pierre Trudeau won three votes and four other prime ministers (R.B. Bennett, Jean Chretien, Wildfrid Laurier and John A. Macdonald) received a single vote each.

Still, the environmental accomplishments of Mulroney's government are undeniable. It's only unfortunate that his time in office didn't offer a sharper turning point in Canadian policy.

Mulroney did not single-handedly end the scourge of acid rain. He did successfully negotiate the Canada-United States Air Quality Agreement — better known as the Acid Rain Treaty — that went a long way toward solving the problem, at least in North America. He did not patch the hole in Earth's ozone layer — but his government hosted and ratified the Montreal Protocol, through which dozens of countries pledged to reduce the use of chlorofluorocarbons.

Mulroney's Progressive Conservative government also enacted the Canadian Environmental Protection Act to manage toxic substances in the environment, and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act to review the environmental impacts of major projects.

It established the International Institute for Sustainable Development — still a leading voice on global environmental policy — and launched the National Roundtable on the Economy and the Environment (NRTEE), an expert advisory body that published