Brian Mulroney first brought the Progressive Conservatives to power while I was at the beginning of my career as a journalist. But his political life was never something I covered in much detail. His decision to negotiate a free trade agreement with the United States transformed Canada’s economic history and, yet, consumed much of my working life for several years.
Mr. Mulroney died Thursday at age 84 in a Florida hospital after falling in his home. Alan Cowell wrote an extensive obituary of Mr Mulroney documenting his many significant achievements but also the allegations of financial misdeeds and influence peddling that followed his time in office. Such allegations tarnished his reputation, even among former supporters, and contributed to the demise of the federal Progressive Conservative Party.
[Read: Brian Mulroney, Prime Minister Who Led Canada Into NAFTA, Dies at 84]
I reported on free trade negotiations primarily from Washington. Unlike Canada, where it often seemed like every molecule of political and public debate was consumed by talks, negotiations there barely registered.
Nothing in my professional experience has polarized Canadians as much as Mulroney’s movement toward closer economic integration with the United States. Whatever the economic benefits of free trade, Canadian industry at the time consisted largely of often inefficient subsidiaries that produced a limited range of products to escape import tariffs of up to 33% on manufactured goods. Workers in those factories, and the communities that depended on them, were rightly concerned that shipments from their parent companies’ larger, more efficient U.S. plants would wipe out their free-trade jobs.
(The auto industry was an exception. In 1965, Canada and the United States made an agreement that allowed American cars to enter Canada tariff-free in exchange for continued production in Canada, most of which was then shipped in the United States.)
Mulroney’s decision to pursue free trade represented a reversal of the Conservative Party’s legacy. Early in Canada’s history, tariffs were relatively low and intended primarily to raise money for the government. In an era without income taxes, tariffs were effectively a sales tax on imported products. But John A. Macdonald, the Conservative leader and the country’s first prime minister, successfully campaigned in 1878 on something he called national politics, a key element of which was the imposition of high tariffs to create an invisible wall around Canada to protect its industries. He stayed there, more or less, for a century until Mr. Mulroney arrived.
One of Mulroney’s pitches for a free trade agreement was the possibility that it could put an end to seemingly perpetual trade disputes such as the one over exports of Canadian softwood lumber to the United States.
Although Mr. Mulroney and President Ronald Reagan made a great public display of their friendship, the talks did not go well. When I met with a group of journalists one Sunday morning in October 1987 in an ornate meeting room inside the U.S. Treasury building, it was not certain that a deal would be announced. But an agreement had been reached, and it included a system for resolving trade disputes, the main sticking point, even if it wasn’t exactly what Mulroney had promised.
The following year, a federal election was fought over free trade and Mulroney prevailed.
The subsequent addition of Mexico to create the North American Free Trade Agreement – and the subsequent globalization of trade after the agreement that created the World Trade Organization cut many tariffs around the world – left the Canada-US free trade in the shadows of history.
But the initial free trade agreement had profound effects, both positive and negative, on the Canadian economy. Jobs have disappeared. Starting in 2001 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, found that in Canadian industries that had been hit by the biggest tariff cuts, jobs fell by 15 percent from 1989 to 1996. Over the same period, imports from the United States of products previously blocked by high tariffs have increased dramatically. 70 percent.
On the bright side, at least in economic terms, the study found that within those industries once protected by tariffs, labor productivity – how much factories earned per hour of work – increased by an annual rate significant compound of 2.1%. Increasing productivity generally helps reduce prices for consumers and, of course, benefits factory owners and investors.
Canada has not become, as Mulroney’s critics feared, the fifty-first post-free trade state. But the pact has not kept some of its promises. The softwood lumber dispute continues to fester decades later. And not all communities benefited from the resurgence of jobs and factories that ultimately trickled down to the economy as a whole.
[Read: This City Once Made Much of What Canada Bought. But No More.]
Furthermore, as Alan explains in Mulroney’s obituary, free trade and many other important changes he brought to Canada during his time as prime minister were ultimately cast aside in the public’s memory. The cause was a story directly involving Mr. Mulroney that I reported on: his acceptance, as an investigation found, of “envelopes full of cash” during three meetings with a German arms and aviation lobbyist.
Trans Canada
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Vjosa Isai reports that a 150 per cent increase in car thefts across the Toronto area over the past six years has prompted a “mix of paranoia, vigilance and resentment.”
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Once-secret documents released in partially redacted form detail how two scientists working at Canada’s top microbiology laboratory were entangled with Chinese institutions and indicate that one of them posed a “realistic and credible threat to Canada’s economic security.”
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Following an increase in asylum requests from Mexicans arriving in Canada, the federal government has reimposed visa requirements for most people traveling from that country.
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An unopened box of more than 10,000 hockey cards found in Saskatchewan has sold for $3.7 million. However, Amanda Holpuch reports, that doesn’t necessarily mean packages will be opened now.
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Eight members of the Canadian figure skating team that competed in the team competition at the 2022 Olympics have filed a case with the Court of Arbitration for Sport asking that they be awarded bronze medals in the event. Russia was demoted from gold to bronze after a member of its team was banned for four years for doping.
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Anne Carson, a Toronto-born writer who is most commonly described as a poet, is the subject of an unconventional profile in the New York Times Magazine.
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Kenneth Mitchell, a Toronto-born actor who appeared in the “Star Trek: Discovery” series and the “Captain Marvel” film, has died at 49.
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Chris Gauthier, who grew up in Armstrong, British Columbia, and had a prolific career as an actor, appearing in more than 20 films and several series, has died. He was 48 years old.
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Magda Konieczna, who teaches at Concordia University in Montreal, told my colleague David Streitfeld that, when it comes to local news, North America has entered a “dystopian future.”
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In the Watching newsletter, our TV critic Margaret Lyons writes that “Moonshine,” a comedy series about a family that runs a resort and deals drugs in Nova Scotia, is “brilliant and exciting.” (In Canada it is available on CBC Gem.)
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Simon Winchester writes in his review of “The Darkest White,” which tells the story of an avalanche in British Columbia’s Selkirk Mountains that killed seven people, that it is “probably the most relentlessly thrilling non-fiction book I’ve come across in years “.
Born in Windsor, Ontario, Ian Austen studied in Toronto, lives in Ottawa and has written about Canada for the New York Times for twenty years. Follow him on Bluesky: @ianausten.bsky.social.
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