Fateful Decision

The historic free-trade agreement between Canada and the United States is in danger--a potential victim of deep and understandable misgivings on the part of the citizens of Canada, too long taken for granted by the United States. The decision will come in the results of the Canadian national elections on Monday.

Polls indicate that no party will win a majority in the elections. If so, the trade agreement will be dead. Only a majority victory by the Progressive Conservative Party of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney would implement the pact. The Liberal Party, led by John Turner, forced the election as part of its strategy to kill the trade agreement.

Turner has made much of the perils of American hegemony, dominance, cultural colonialism and economic control in the campaign. He has even suggested that approval of the trade agreement would ultimately expose Canadians to American-style medicine rather than the highly effective, much praised and demonstrably popular national health-insurance program of Canada. Audiences have been responsive. It has never been difficult to excite anxiety about the giant lurking south of the border. The mixture of the insensitivity and thoughtlessness and neglect that have often characterized Washington’s policies toward Canada, including the woeful inaction on acid rain, has encouraged these deep suspicions.

It is of course for the Canadians to choose the course of their nation through the selection of the government. The visions of the leading parties offer choices. We have confidence, based on a long history of outstanding leaders in Ottawa, that the choice will be well made.

But we feel compelled to say that, if that choice is to be based on the free-trade agreement, the Canadians need to understand its real meaning and to look beyond the descriptions clouded by irrelevant prejudice. The most striking quality of this carefully drawn agreement is that it respects sovereignty on both sides of the border and balances economic opportunities for both nations. It does not impose American dominance on the new market. It broadens an already largely free trading community, facilitating its operation by provisions to settle disputes that have in recent years threatened to unravel the special relationship between the two nations. It is an agreement of opportunity for those on both sides of the border who are prepared for the global competition that already is facing the two nations.

We think that Turner corrupted the parliamentary process in Canada by using the power of his party in the Senate to block parliamentary approval of the trade agreement and to force this election at this time. He seems now to have corrupted the electoral process by distorting the meaning of this pact out of all reason. It will be no small tragedy if that rejection is based on distortions that hide from Canadians the elements on which their decision should be based.

There is another consideration--one that needs to be mentioned even if it invites suggestions that it is a veiled threat: Canadian rejection of the free-trade agreement would not necessarily ensure a continuation of the relatively congenial relations that now exist. There inevitably would be a deterioration in relations, we think, because a Canadian rejection would unleash the special interests in the United States that have sought in the past to punish Canadian competitors rather than to compete with them and that are bitter because Canada enjoys a favorable balance of trade between the two nations. There would be a new risk of a proliferation of cedar-siding protectionism and endless controversy over whether goods and grains are fairly priced or subsidized. Worse, there would be bitterness because of the loss of a singular opportunity to perfect the world’s largest trading partnership as a model for a world pains-takingly working to liberalize trade.