Political operative Michel Cogger helped Brian Mulroney become prime minister

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Michel Cogger helped make Brian Mulroney prime minister. Mr. Mulroney rewarded his friend with an appointment to the Senate. Both contributed to the life of Canada. Both became embroiled in scandals.

In Mr. Cogger’s case it led to charges of influence peddling which, after two trials, resulted in his being found guilty, although he was granted an absolute discharge. He paid tens of thousands of dollars in fines for his long absences from the Senate. These aspects of his life are part of his public legacy. But his more lasting legacy will be his behind-the-scenes role in bringing one of Canada’s most consequential prime ministers to office.

Michel Benoit Cogger died on Jan. 27, at the age of 85 after a variety of age-related illnesses. He was predeceased by his wife, Erica, and leaves his children, Christine, Alexandre and Nicholas, and five grandchildren.

Born in Quebec City on March 31, 1939, Mr. Cogger embraced sports and travel in his youth, which included spending time on a kibbutz in Israel.

He arrived at Laval University law school in 1960, where he excelled, and where he became fast friends with another student, a working-class young man from Baie-Comeau named Brian Mulroney. Inspired by the prime ministership of John Diefenbaker, Mr. Mulroney was already an ardent Progressive Conservative, making him something of a political rarity in Quebec.

The cohort of students at Laval in those years was among its most distinguished. Other classmates and friends included future Quebec premier and sovereigntist leader Lucien Bouchard, the future newspaper magnate Peter White, and future senator Michael Meighen, grandson of prime minister Arthur Meighen.

While at Laval, Mr. Cogger and Mr. Mulroney helped Mr. White organize a symposium called the Congress on Canadian Affairs, which debated the topic: The Canadian Experiment: Success or Failure? The conference, which included speeches from Quebec Premier Jean Lesage and federal Justice Minister Davie Fulton, attracted national attention.

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These were heady days. Mr. Lesage’s Liberal government presided over the first expression of the Quiet Revolution, as Quebec emerged from the oppressive and repressive rule of the Union Nationale and sought greater autonomy and self-expression – even, possibly, independence.

Both Mr. Mulroney and Mr. Cogger went on to practise law, and they remained close friends. The pair were travelling through Europe in 1972 when Mr. Mulroney, by now a rising labour lawyer, was called back to Montreal to help settle a strike. Mr. Cogger was an usher at Mr. Mulroney’s wedding in May, 1973.

One summer’s day in 1975, the Mulroneys visited Mr. Cogger and his wife, Erica, at their home in the Eastern Townships. Federal Progressive Conservative leader Robert Stanfield had decided to step down, and during a long walk that day, Mr. Cogger talked to Mr. Mulroney about the coming leadership race.

“He said the new leader must be young, attractive and forward-looking,” Mr. Mulroney recalled in his memoirs. “He had to be fluently bilingual and must instinctively understand Quebec.”

Mr. Cogger urged Mr. Mulroney to run for the leadership.

Christine Cogger said her father told the family that the decision to put Mr. Mulroney forward as a leadership candidate was made collectively by his former Laval classmates. “They nominated him because of his oratorical skills and his good looks,” she said in an interview.

Bill Fox was then a Quebec correspondent for Southam News. Years later he served as Mr. Mulroney’s press secretary. He remembers Mr. Cogger as someone who was both generous and insightful. He was “flawlessly bilingual, flawlessly bicultural,” Mr. Fox said, with “a pan-Canadian view of issues.”

Mr. Cogger served as chairman of the 1976 leadership campaign, which brought Mr. Mulroney to national prominence. But it was Alberta MP Joe Clark who won the leadership and then the Canadian federal election of 1979, unseating Liberal prime minister Pierre Trudeau.

Mr. Mulroney never fully accepted his loss to Mr. Clark, and after the Progressive Conservatives were defeated on their first budget in the House of Commons, and Mr. Trudeau returned to power in the February, 1980 election, many believe that Mr. Mulroney conspired to undermine Mr. Clark’s leadership, assisted by Mr. Cogger.

Mr. Mulroney defeated Mr. Clark in the leadership convention of 1983, and Liberal Leader John Turner in the following year’s general election. In both that election and the election of 1988, Mr. Cogger raised funds and campaigned for Mr. Mulroney in Quebec. A grateful prime minister appointed his friend to the Senate in 1986.

Before entering the Senate, Mr. Cogger had acted as a lawyer for companies owned by Quebec businessman Guy Montpetit, who was seeking government assistance and contracts. Mr. Cogger arranged meetings between Mr. Montpetit and federal politicians and officials who could provide such funds. Upon entering the Senate, Mr. Cogger continued that work, which he should not have done.

One example: Mr. Cogger referred to a proposal for a computer translation service operated by Mr. Montpetit during lunch in 1988 with the senator’s old Laval University friend, Mr. Bouchard, now secretary of state. But there was no arm-twisting involved, Mr. Bouchard later testified at trial, and officials eventually rejected the proposal.

In 1991, the RCMP charged the senator with influence peddling.

As a Supreme Court of Canada judgment later observed: “The accused was very effective in having ministers and senior officials meet in order to ‘advance’ his client’s business.” But “while he appeared to be very good at having these people meet very quickly, the meetings never had the expected success, as no grants were awarded to Guy Montpetit’s companies.”

Mr. Cogger’s troubles were hardly unique. In the first two years of Mr. Mulroney’s first government, five ministers resigned because of scandals, with others departing in later years.

Most famously, Mr. Mulroney himself acknowledged that he had received substantial sums from Karlheinz Schreiber, a shady business operator, for reasons never properly explained.

At Mr. Cogger’s first trial, a Quebec judge acquitted him, reasoning the lawyer might not have realized his actions were illegal. The Quebec Court of Appeal upheld this verdict but in 1997 the Supreme Court ordered a new trial on the grounds that ignorance of the law is not a defence. At the 1998 retrial, Mr. Cogger was found guilty and sentenced to do probation, community service and pay fines. He appealed the sentence in 2001 and was granted an absolute discharge.

“It has been a long, agonizing descent,” for the senator, Maclean’s magazine said at the time. “Driving his late-model Mercedes-Benz coupe, heli-skiing in Austria and entertaining lavishly in his three homes, Cogger embodied the heady early Mulroney years. Now 59, his influence and homes are gone, and he drives a beat-up 10-year-old compact car.”

Christine Cogger remembers her parents having to sell the family home, and the family being beset by reporters and RCMP officers. “It was a really difficult time for our family.”

In 2001, the Quebec Court of Appeal gave Mr. Cogger an absolute discharge, which meant he had no criminal record. The year before, Mr. Cogger had resigned from the Senate, after being fined $23,250 for missing sessions. He was absent from the upper house much of the time during his legal troubles.

In the years that followed, Mr. Cogger lived quietly, tending to his wife who had fallen ill with cancer. Erica Cogger died in 2012. In his final years, Mr. Cogger dealt with a number of age-related illnesses.

He continued to follow politics closely, lamenting its growing polarization. In his day, people from different parties could battle in the House or Senate, then go out for a beer together after. No more.

Christine Cogger remembers her father as a “master storyteller” who was “part of a group of individuals who cared deeply about Canada and making it a better place.”

Whatever his legal troubles, he devoted much of his life to his party and his country, both of which he loved.

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