Although Trudeau’s overall impact on the country’s identity was enormous, the economy suffered under him, with the stagflation of the 1970s and a horrific recession in the early 1980s. Voters punished Trudeau’s party in the polls, and the new prime minister, Progressive Conservative (PC) leader Brian Mulroney won the largest governing majority in Canadian history in 1984.
Mulroney, who grew up in a small Quebec town, had an ideological affinity with the emerging trends of privatization and deregulation in 1980s Anglo-American conservatism. In 1986, his government opened free trade talks with the Reagan administration, forcing a national conversation that would put the cornerstones of Canadian political identity to the test. It became the defining issue of the subsequent 1988 election — an election presented by both the pro- and anti-free trade sides of the debate as a critical juncture in the nation’s destiny. There would be no turning back.
The “end of History” for Canada, then, was not the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, nor the final collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, but the election of 1988: a messy national conversation about how much economic, political, and cultural exposure to the U.S. Canada can and should pursue.
Mulroney ingeniously framed the free-trade agreement as a modern nation-building project. The infamous American political consultant Arthur Finkelstein was drafted in to help, determining that the task at hand was “to convince Canadians to drink pig piss.” Mulroney’s team was intensely aware of the electoral risks associated with free trade. His rhetoric rose to the challenge. Promising to “instill in Canadians a new sense of national purpose,” the prime minister expressed his faith in Canadians’ ability to maintain their identity and “prosper under greater competition.” “Be bold, be daring,” he urged during the campaign, essentially flipping the script on Canada’s traditional ambivalence toward its relationship with the U.S.
John Turner’s Liberal Party became the primary agent of the anti-free trade side in the election. Its election platform declared, “The Mulroney trade agreement sells out Canada’s sovereign control over its own economic, social, cultural, and regional policies. It turns Canada into a colony of the United States.” One memorable Liberal television advertisement from the campaign made this sentiment manifest by depicting shady backroom trade negotiators erasing the Canada-U.S. border as the “one line” in the agreement that needed to be changed. The Pro-Canada Network (PCN), an umbrella organization made up of feminist, labor, cultural, and environmental activists, argued that Canada’s soul was on the line. Free trade was but a trojan horse for the undermining of Canadian sovereignty; the imposition of U.S.-style economic and cultural norms — resulting in lower pay, more working hours, for example — would change Canadian society in a way this otherwise diverse set of interest groups all viewed as existential.