Word: free
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Smelling advantage, Turner persistently -- and with no hard evidence to back up his claims -- warned that ratification of free trade would lead to U.S. and Canadian pressure to reduce Canada's comprehensive system of medicare and generous old-age pensions. Other opponents of free trade, many of them organized in the activist coalition known as the Pro-Canada Network, published a pamphlet that featured cartoons of, among other things, Mulroney pledging allegiance in front of the Stars and Stripes. A pro-Mulroney heckler who showed up at a Turner rally in Montreal was beaten bloody, an incident that shocked...
...late days of the race, Turner's pitch grew increasingly shrill. U.S. officials had remained silent to avoid any hint of interference in Canadian affairs. Yet when Ronald Reagan made a bland 30-second reference to the free- trade pact in a long-planned speech on global trade -- the President called the accord "an example of cooperation at its best" -- Turner described Reagan's words as a "major breach of courtesy between the two nations" and castigated Mulroney for getting "his good friend at head office, Ronald Reagan, to help him do a job he can't complete himself." Again...
Mulroney's response was simple and accurate: the virtues of free trade could be measured in jobs, jobs, jobs. At a rally in the Vancouver suburb of Port Coquitlam, he told supporters that "2 million jobs are dependent on trade." Wherever he traveled the Prime Minister declaimed, "John Turner says the cause of his life is to tear up a treaty; the cause of my life is to build a nation." Failure to endorse the trade agreement, he warned, would leave the country mired in the "poverty of protectionism...
...Canadian politics, Quebec provided the decisive margin last week. The Conservatives benefited, of course, from the fact that Mulroney is a native son, fluent in both English and locally accented French. The party also enjoyed the strong support of Quebec Premier Robert Bourassa, a Liberal but a believer in free trade and Quebec's prospects in a more open North American economy. Most important, Quebec's response reflected the degree to which the French-speaking province has become politically and culturally self-assured, apparently more confident than much of English Canada that its identity will not be submerged into...
...Free trade will hardly mean the end of all Canada-U.S. commercial disputes. Naturally enough, in a dense and complex trading relationship, some issues are almost always simmering. Among the most sensitive is a long-standing U.S. complaint that Canada illegally protects West Coast fish processors. And by Dec. 6, the Reagan Administration must rule on the continuation of a punitive 35% tariff on imports of Canadian cedar shakes and shingles...