Diane: Diefenbaker started the process which Mulroney completed. Having said that, I also believe that while Diefenbaker was unduly attached to the Union Jack and all it represented, he would not have jeopardized Canada’s future the way Mulroney and the “modern” Conservatives did. I believe that when he would have seen where his policies, his insecurities were leading the country he would have changed course; he would have put his insecurities aside and did what was good for the country – but not Mulroney.

Johnny: Are you saying that Mulroney did not have Canada’s interests at heart?

Diane: Mulroney was an American wan-a-be. Outside politics, Mulroney basically held two jobs during his adult life; the first as a lawyer and the other as Executive Vice-president and later President of the Iron Ore Company of Canada, a subsidiary of the Iron Ore Company of Minneapolis, Minnesota. He took the job offered by the Americans after losing to Joe Clark for the federal leadership of the Conservative party in 1976. This is the time, most historians agree, when Mulroney’s love for all things American blossomed. They had the superior political system; the superior leadership and bowing before that superior leadership was, for him, the natural thing to do. For his subservience, the Americans had rewarded him handsomely, and he believed they would do the same for Canada if Canadians followed his example and knelt before the American colossus.

Johnny: Surely this was not the behaviour of a rational man?

Diane: Historians, particularly historians with training in psychology, maintain that this submissiveness, not to say sycophantic attitude towards his American superiors was not unlike that of a child growing up in a household with a domineering, successful and demanding father. A child growing up in that environment tends to feel inadequate, afraid that he will never measure up to his father’s – which he loves and respects – expectations and will do everything to please his father; to try to make his father proud of his accomplishments even into adulthood, even with a surrogate father. This is why, they maintain, the relationship with his American father figures, first his American corporate fathers then the Presidents of the United States, Reagan and Bush senior, was not unlike the love of a son for his father.

Johnny: Are you saying that Mulroney was in love with the Presidents of the United States and that influenced Canadian foreign policy towards the U.S.?

Diane: It’s not that simple. Mulroney, in his eulogy for President Reagan talked about his love for the man. A few Canadian Prime Ministers have expressed admiration, even admitted liking an American President, none to my knowledge, have ever expressed love for an American President. This love he expressed in words and deeds makes the whole question of the change in Canada’s attitude towards the U.S., under Mulroney’s leadership, a very complicated thing, a very complicated thing indeed.

Johnny: Without a doubt, love and politics makes for an interesting mix even when the relationship is platonic. It was platonic wasn’t it?

Diane: Of course. In his own way, Mulroney was a very moral individual. This was strictly a “relationship of the heart”.

Johnny: Getting back to your claim that Mulroney was enamoured of everything American; that the people he credited for those things he loved about the United States were first, his corporate masters, then his political masters. What evidence do you have that this love blinded him to Canadian interests where the Americans were concerned?

Diane: Remember how he committed Canada to the first Gulf War without consulting Canadians – after having been summoned to the seaside home of the elder Bush in Kennebunkport Maine. Bush gave him his marching orders and he carried them out without question, the same way as when his corporate masters, The Iron Ore Company of Minneapolis, Minnesota told him to shut down that town in northern Quebec. Imagine if he had been Prime Minister at the outset of the Second Gulf War?

Johnny: It could have been costlier than the more than 56,000 Canadian lives lost when another Canadian Conservative Prime Minister, Robert Borden, blindly committed Canada to fight for King and Empire during the First World War.

Diane: The love that Mulroney expressed for Reagan was just another manifestation of the great Canadian inferiority complex that I talked about at the very beginning. Until Mulroney, the normal manifestation of this inferiority complex, in English Canada anyway, was a knee jerk response, by mostly Conservative Prime Ministers, – Wilfrid Laurier being the reluctant exception in sending volunteers to fight in the Boer War – to whatever demands in blood or money the British Crown requested.

Johnny: It is somewhat ironic that Canada managed to remain a country when the object of its affection only demanded lives and money as proof of Canada’s love and ceased to be a country, in your theory, when the new object of Canada’s affection demanded control of Canada’s economy and ownership of the countries resources as proof of its suitor’s affection.

Diane: Ironic and tragic.

Johnny: You said that Mulroney, to continue using your smitten-lover metaphor, gave away Canada as proof of his affection for his beloved United States. How could one man accomplished this? If he did, that was quite impressive. If he did, then maybe love does conquer all.