During the Rio Summit, Maurice Strong wrote that you caused a mini-international incident. Apparently, George H.W. Bush had come on the condition that Al Gore wouldn’t be there, but you didn’t know that when you invited Gore into your meeting with Bush.

The Secret Service arranged a room for Bush and me before the main event, and as we were going in, I spotted Al Gore. I said “Al, come on in.” So he came in with us, and it was only President Bush, Barbara, Mila, myself, Arthur Campeau, and Gore.

I thought this was an important event where partisanship shouldn’t play a role. In fact, part of our delegation was headed by Jean Charest, and on the other side was the opposition critic, Paul Martin. So they were taken fully into our confidence. It was only a Canadian delegation; it wasn’t a Liberal delegation or a Conservative delegation, which is one of the reasons why I thought that we managed to make some progress.

President Bush originally did not want to go. He had been advised by Vice President Quayle and the members of the American Competitiveness Council that this might not be a good idea. Because he might get snookered into signing something that would impact on the competitiveness of the American economy.

I spoke to President Bush, whom I knew to be a great environmentalist. I said “Look, there is a French expression that says ‘Les absents ont toujours tort.’” In other words, if you’re not at the table, you’re going to get hoaxed. So you’re much better to be there, to defend your interests and to speak about your record, which was not a small one in Bush’s case, and make your own mind up whether you’re going to sign onto this or not.

And so he came down and you know what happened after that.

How did you get the US on board for the Acid Rain Treaty?

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. Which a lot of people in Congress resisted because it meant placing an economic burden on the American economy. They argued it would cause layoffs in the industrial midwest, which was heavily represented by Congressmen and Senators who said “Hey, hey, hold the phone. If you do that I’m going to vote against you in another area.”