Free trade at twenty

Twenty years ago on January 1, the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (FTA) came into effect, following a tumultuous national argument in which Canadians debated the nature of Canada, and not just the perennial topics of federalism, the place of English and French, or the role of government. Business lobby groups spent millions, arguing that Canada was strong, and, able to compete with the U.S., in effect saying free trade was the Canadian nationalist policy.

Resistance came from everywhere. Women's organizations, farm groups, trade unions, international solidarity NGO's, the churches, and the nascent Council of Canadians, along with many others, banded in the national Pro-Canada (later Action Canada) Network to oppose the deal.

The anti-free trade forces won the debate. A majority of Canadians voted for parties that opposed free trade. But the Conservatives won the election, and the deal went into effect, followed five years later by NAFTA.

The free trade deal changed everything, and nothing. Everything, because political activists had to rethink what could be accomplished through parliamentary and extra-parliamentary action, given the existing party/electoral system, and the re-balancing of political forces towards naked corporate power. The Canadian left became fragmented, and is divided to this day on what needs to be done.

Except in British Columbia the NDP failed to mount an effective campaign against the FTA. Ontario trade union leaders were left to wonder why they supported the NDP, and some, notably at the CAW, no longer do.

Nothing changed because the outcome of implanting the FTA was mainly to propel Canada faster along on its prevailing trajectory of dependent resource producer in a world dominated by the U.S. The purpose of the FTA was to re-enforce the status quo, helping business to dominant public life more easily. That the FTA worked for business was seen when exchanging a Conservative government for a Liberal one in 1993 did not produce meaningful change in government policy.

In the first five years of the agreement, the Canadian share of the U.S. market (and of the Canadian market) declined. Canadian manufacturing job loss was endemic, as was documented by Bruce Campbell on behalf of the Canadian Labour Congress. The U.S. share of its own market also declined, but the U.S. share of the Canada market increased.

The FTA allied Canada to the U.S. on world trade issues, undermining multilateralism, and leaving foreign policy downgraded, along with the then Department of External Affairs, which became subservient to trade promotion goals. The FTA was a commercial union. Canada had agreed to integrate its economy with the U.S. economy. Apart from meaningless tariff reductions, and a supposed dispute settlement mechanism, Canadian exporters did not get improved -- let alone guaranteed -- access to the U.S. market.

The CBC failed to object to the obvious surrender of sovereignty under the FTA, and discredited itself in the eyes of many. With free trade, the U.S. won guaranteed access to Canadian resources and corporate assets. U.S. corporations were to receive national treatment in Canada. In effect the trade deal was a corporate charter of rights that overrides the Canadian constitution.

The adoption of the FTA hastened the demise of Brian Mulroney, and his Meech Lake Accord. Instead of reaching out to those most damaged by free trade, Mulroney gloated, and his adversaries, including Pierre Trudeau, were able to take advantage of the animosity generated by his indifference to worker who lost their livelihood, to attack him for proposing to weaken the power of the central

government yet again, through the Meech Lake accord.

An expatriate academic, writer and broadcaster living in Britain at the time said Canada signed its own economic death warrant when it signed the free trade agreement. His name: Michael Ignatieff.

Significantly, the FTA revealed as never before, Canada as a site for class warfare waged by U.S. corporations, and Canadian compradors against the rest of us. The business class was aided and abetted by a compliant media. John Turner the worthy, however unlikely, champion of the anti-free trade electoral forces was the victim of withering personal attacks, including from within the LIberal party, designed to discredit his noble message, by destroying the messenger.

The importance of the free trade debate was that there was a debate. Ever since, whether it be on fiscal deficits, interest rates, the WTO, climate change, or the current financial melt down, the business class has been doing everything they can to ensure that an open debate not happen again. On public issues, through ownership of the media, when business manages to control who is allowed to speak, and determine the acceptable range of views, it wins, and the public loses.

Twenty years after the FTA, it is more important than ever to make our debates as public, and as continuous, as possible. As we showed then, economic issues matter too much to be left to the business class.

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