Word: newfoundlands
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...weeks ago, Mulroney thought he had secured an agreement on the pact after a 70-hour marathon of closed-door bargaining with provincial premiers in Ottawa. Last week he saw that deal fall apart when the legislatures of Manitoba and Newfoundland adjourned without taking ratification votes. "Today is not the day to launch new constitutional initiatives," a somber Mulroney said afterward. "It is a time to heal wounds and reach out to fellow Canadians...
...attempt to save the deal. Mulroney's chief constitutional negotiator, Senator Lowell Murray, announced that the government would ask the Supreme Court to extend the June 23 deadline, thus giving Manitoba time to complete its ratification. The maneuver had the opposite result. The premier of the other dissenting province, Newfoundland's Clyde Wells, complaining bitterly of the "fabricated precipice" of the June 23 deadline, then called off his own legislature's vote. Murray announced an hour later that the accord had expired...
...that hard-won agreement died last week, the country sank into a fit of finger pointing. Ottawa blamed Newfoundland's Wells for the debacle. But Mulroney himself was a major target. Said Jean Chretien, favored to become & leader of the opposition Liberal Party: "Prime Minister, Canadians will never ever forgive...
Canada's long-running confederation soap opera headed for a cliff-hanger finale last week. In the hardscrabble Atlantic province of Newfoundland, 52 provincial legislators hurriedly canvassed their constituents on whether to accept a constitutional agreement hashed out by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and the country's ten provincial premiers a week earlier. In the prairie province of Manitoba, Elijah Harper, a Cree Indian and member of the legislative assembly, repeatedly blocked debate on the same ratification issue. The clock was ticking: if either legislature fails to approve the agreement by June 23, a delicate compromise over Quebec's place...
...arrangement, of course, would demand even more wearying constitutional debates. But if Manitoba and Newfoundland (which joined Canada only in 1949) fail to meet the Meech deadline, or reject the agreement, the issue to be debated may be Quebec's separation. Canada, which frets constantly about maintaining a separate identity from the U.S., could then lose the bilingual and bicultural character that is the country's greatest difference from its powerful neighbor...