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DURING my second year of university, I was exposed for the first time to mass, extraparliamentary political campaigning.
It was the fall of 1988, and the “Free Trade Election” was on. Of course, the main electoral contenders had lots to say about the Free Trade Agreement between Canada and the United States (FTA) — the Conservative Party under Brian Mulroney championed it, the John Turner Liberals hated it, and Ed Broadbent’s New Democratic Party (NDP) opposed it — but the lasting images and memories for me were from a different source.
The FTA had been signed a year earlier, in October 1987, and mass opposition had already coalesced around a country-wide organisational structure called the Pro-Canada Network (PCN).
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DAVE McKEE argues that Canadian unions should immediately organise to set the agenda before the next election, as monopoly capital is now rallying to the Conservative Party after Justin Trudeau’s political demise
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DAVE McKEE argues that Canadian unions should immediately organise to set the agenda before the next election, as monopoly capital is now rallying to the Conservative Party after Justin Trudeau’s political demise
Global South governments’ sovereignty and ability to decide future economic policy are severely compromised by signing free trade agreements, whose terms are heavily weighted in favour of the already wealthy countries of the global North, writes BERT SCHOUWENBURG