Leader of the Government in the House of Commons (Canada) position of Government House Leader was formally recognized. In 1968, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau designated the Government House Leader as President of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada. Under Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, the roles of Government House Leader and President of the Privy Council were separated in 1989. Under Mulroney and his successors, the position of House Leader would often be held by someone who was named a Minister of State without any portfolio responsibilities specified. Since 2003, this Minister of State status has been obscured in all but the most official circumstances by the use of a "Leader
Brian Mulroney 66.9 per cent of delegates at the party convention in January 1983 in Winnipeg, he resigned and ran to regain his post at the 1983 leadership convention. Despite still not being a member of Parliament, Mulroney ran against him, campaigning more shrewdly than he had done seven years before. Mulroney had been criticized in 1976 for lacking policy depth and substance, a weakness he addressed by making several major speeches across the country in the early 1980s, which were collected into a book, "Where I Stand", published in 1983. Mulroney also avoided most of the flash of his earlier campaign,