Word: canadas
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...With Canada's balloting set for Nov. 21, last Tuesday's impassioned exchange between John and Brian in an Ottawa television studio easily bested anything between George and Michael. The key issue during the emotionally charged three-hour debate was the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement signed by Mulroney and Ronald Reagan in January and passed by the U.S. Congress. The agreement, which has yet to be approved by the Canadian Senate, has propelled to the surface profound and often submerged anxieties over Canada's self-image and its relationship with its neighbor to the south...
...shouted and pointed fingers, demonstrators outside the studio waved placards reading FREE CANADA, TRADE MULRONEY. Turner, driving his argument home, declared, "We built a country east and west and north. We built it on an infrastructure that deliberately resisted the continental pressure of the United States. For 120 years we've done it. With one signature of a pen, you've reversed that. It will reduce us, I am sure, to an economic colony of the United States...
...statement was literally true. But in pointing out how easily Canada could escape from the pact, Mulroney made a clear misstep. Throughout the campaign, the 50-year-old Prime Minister had cast the agreement as essential to his country's prosperity, and it was instantly apparent to the viewers that the pact could not be vital and disposable at the same time. The exchange crystallized a nag of doubts about the pact and about Mulroney himself...
...pact. Tussles over such subjects as the Tories' plans for a $8 billion fleet of nuclear-powered submarines or the multitude of corruption scandals that have plagued the Mulroney government are only incidental entertainments amid the imbroglios over free trade. And because the issue touches the core of Canada's sense of itself as a nation and its psychic separation from the U.S., the topic is dangerously flammable, an invitation to a spark...
...trade pact in the Liberal-controlled Senate. Though Mulroney sought to turn the race into a referendum on his leadership, the trade issue has not only dogged him but has also put him in a seemingly contradictory situation. While he is running as the man who led Canada into an era of sunny prosperity, he is also campaigning on the claim that free trade is the sine qua non of Canada's economic future...