'Very thoughtful, generous, very funny': Former PM Mulroney says of King Charles III

Former prime minister Brian Mulroney says he thinks newly crowned King Charles III will “surprise everyone,” and “be excellent” as the new monarch, in part because he has been “constantly underestimated all of his life.”

King Charles III and his wife Queen Camilla were crowned in Westminster Abbey on Saturday.

Mulroney has spent a lot of time with King Charles III since the two first met four decades ago, and the former prime minister said he considers him a “good friendly acquaintance,” having last visited with him just before the COVID-19 pandemic began.

He said, in his opinion, the new monarch has always been underestimated, sometimes inadvertently because he was in the shadow of his mother, the late Queen Elizabeth II, who served “in the most impeccable, impressive style possible.”

“I never thought he was given the credit that he deserved throughout that period of time,” Mulroney told CTV’s Question Period host Vassy Kapelos in an exclusive interview airing Sunday.

“But … I mean, for a politician, for example, there's no better position to be in than to be underestimated,” he also quipped. “So I think that Canadians and others can look forward to him being a fantastic king.”

“I think he's going to be excellent,” Mulroney added. “He has some great ideas. He's a very modern man. He's very thoughtful, generous, very funny guy.”

Mulroney also said he believes King Charles III’s personality and interests — in human rights and the environment, for example — will “endear him to people.”

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He told Kapelos about his last visit with the King, who at the time was Prince of Wales, at a “small dinner party for a very close mutual friend in London,” a few years ago.

Mulroney said he and King Charles are both fans of the late English singer Vera Lynn, who sang the “very sentimental song” “We'll Meet Again” to troops boarding ships to fight in France during the Second World War.

“And for some reason as we both got up from the table, we both started to hum ‘We'll Meet Again,’ and then we broke into song,” Mulroney recounted. “I wish I had a tape recorder, because if I had, and there was a musical agent there, I'd be way ahead of the game. And we sang together for a bit.”

Despite Mulroney’s confidence in King Charles, recent polling shows many Canadians have waning interest in the Monarchy.

There has also been renewed interest in doing away with the Monarchy entirely in Canada, including from Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet, who brought forward a motion in October 2022 to do just that, but it failed in the House of Commons.

Severing ties with the Monarchy in Canada would require an agreement of the House of Commons, the Senate and all 10 provinces, in an “amendment of unanimous consent” to the Constitution.

“I understand it,” Mulroney said in response to questions about Canadians’ diminishing connection to the Monarchy. “It is a bit anachronistic for a great country like Canada, for example … that has 40 million people, with a huge GDP, that’s very influential around the world, and living cheek by jowl with the United States, and yet the head of state that we have is sitting in London.”

“But then you have to ask yourself,” he added, “how have we done with this system? And the answer is we've done brilliantly.

“But I realize there's a younger generation coming along, our country has changed,” he said. “But so far, it’s served us brilliantly.”