Brian Mulroney

When I appointed the Minister of the Environment to major cabinet status, the Planning and Priorities committee, the signals that that sent through Ottawa were major, because that's what the bureaucracy understands.

If your only objective is to be popular, you're going to be popular but you will be known as the Prime Minister who achieved nothing.

You have to spend your political capital on great causes for your country.

So that was Reagan's political problem. As a rancher in California, he was an environmentalist himself. But the President of the United States doesn't control everything that happens in Washington.

You can't be chasing 15 rabbits. Otherwise, the public mind cannot follow you.

We decided that the environment was an integral part of our policies and the political thrust of our government. We gave it the priority and we sustained it with the money required to make it happen.

You accumulate political capital to spend it on noble causes for Canada. If you're afraid to spend your capital, you shouldn't be there.

If everything is very important, then nothing is important.

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.

I can see now a vision emerging how Canada is going to profit in the future from our Arctic resources without destroying the environment on which it is all based.

Whether the process proves to be Kyoto or something else, let's acknowledge the urgency of global warming.

There are so many demands on your time, on your resources, and on the prestige of the government.