Talking to Canadians by Rick Mercer

Author:Rick Mercer [Mercer, Rick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Doubleday Canada
Published: 2021-11-02T00:00:00+00:00

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Before 22 Minutes launched, my gut told me that the great advantage of having a show that covered the news was that the news was always happening. It’s not likely the country was ever going to run out. We would always have subjects to discuss, dissect and satirize. “No matter what the headline,” I prophesied, “we will provide the punchline.”

After a lifetime in this racket, I now realize I was only half-right. True, there is always news, but some weeks there is only bad news. Sometimes the news is unrelenting and unkind. Try sitting around in a writers’ room attempting to pound out jokes when the entire news cycle is dominated by heartbreaking testimony from a national inquiry investigating how thousands of Canadians contracted HIV from the nation’s blood supply. It’s days like that when you regret having a career that relies on making jokes out of headlines. It’s days like that when you think, “Cathy Jones was right. The news is awful.”

Fortunately, it would be quite a while before I learned that lesson. Because the first three episodes of our show aired, entirely by coincidence, during the absolute best possible time to be in the news business—during a federal election. And not just any election. One of the most fascinating federal elections in our history. The political climate in Canada was about to change dramatically, and so were Monday nights on CBC.

It was in many ways an election defined by one man. A man who was in fact absent. Brian Mulroney had been elected eight years previously with the largest Conservative majority in Canadian history. He was young, handsome and telegenic. He had a beautiful wife and an adorable young family. A son of Quebec and of Irish decent, he could make a speech and tell a joke in both official languages.

When he resigned as prime minister shortly before the election in 1993, he had been rebranded. Surrounded by scandal, he was the least popular leader in the history of polling in Canada. On the day he tendered his resignation, polio had higher approval numbers.

Mulroney, love or loathe him, was a polarizing figure. He was a leader who did big things: a free trade agreement, the GST, two failed attempts at ratifying the Constitution. He believed in rolling the dice. He was a fan of the grand gesture.

Immediately after his resignation, most of Mulroney’s cabinet took a look at the entrails and ran off to receive their just rewards in the afterlife of the private sector. None of the old boys entered the race to succeed him. A cabinet rookie and relative newcomer became his successor. And in that way, history was made. Heading into the election, the governing Progressive Conservative Party was led by our first female prime minister, the Right Honourable Kim Campbell.

Campbell was always a long shot. The Conservative brand was bloodied and bowed. But if anyone could salvage the party it was her. She represented generational change, and she represented gender change. She was from British Columbia, and she was bilingual.

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