U.S. anti-North American Union leaders suggest former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney mislead Canadians on Free Trade agenda

by Traci Lawson

When Prime Minister Brian Mulroney campaigned in the 1988 Federal Election in favour of "Free Trade" with the U.S., he attacked then opposition Liberal Leader John Turner and then NDP leader Ed Broadbent for "fear mongering". According to Mr. Mulroney, "Free Trade" posed no threat to Canadian independence from the U.S., and would only bring Canadians "prosperity". He urged Canadians to take what he and his pro-Free Trade negotiators called a "leap of faith".

Well, it appears, Mr. Mulroney' s leap of faith, was the equivalent of someone taking a lead of faith with homemade wings off a very high downtown Toronto skyscraper. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has precipitated worsening economic disparity between "rich", and "poor" in Canada. This is because this Agreement has undermined the ability of government in Canada to create social policies that work toward the eradication of poverty. This includes such policies as "rent control". As a result, homelessness has soared in Canada.

"Free Trade" has also led to highly greed-driven, American Big Business interests taking vast control away from Canadians, in their own society. More and more treasured Canadian institutions, are being taken over by various U.S. corporate interests. These powerful U.S. interests intend to use their growing economic power in the Canadian economy, to replace Canadian norms, with American exploitative practices.

If this trend continues, goodbye Canada's universal public healthcare system, along with other innovative social policy, and also our natural heritage, including ecologically vital boreal forests, as well as comparatively progressive labour laws.

The Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) further reveals that the goal of the Free Trade process has always been to transform Canada from an independent socially progressive society, into an oppressed colony of the United States, like Puerto Rico.

When U.S. leaders who are against the North American Union SPP agenda, presented a News Conference on 20 August 2007, in downtown Ottawa, they critically illuminated in a published document, that then Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, apparently was not truthfully representing "Free Trade" to Canadians. It appears that assimilating Canada into a Big Business controlled United States was indeed always an apparent "hidden agenda" of Brian Mulroney's government.

Howard Phillips who is the chairperson of the Coalition to Block the North American Union, quoted a U.S. based Hudson Institute document which indicated that, "the SPP was started when Brian Mulroney was Prime Minister of Canada, Carlos Salinas was President of Mexico, and George H. W. Bush (the father of the George W. Bush) was President of the United States. Each of these three men was advanced in his political career by the support of David Rockefeller, the Trilateral Commission, and the Council on Foreign Relations."

As John Turner had observed in the 1988 Canadian Federal Election, "Free Trade" is not about "free trade" in general, which Canada and the U.S. by and large, had already obtained in the late 1980's. The "Free Trade" Agreement which then Brian Mulroney, who now advises current Prime Minister Harper, sought, was the give away of Canada to the ultra right wing agenda of the U.S. political-religious-military-industrial complex.

Saving Canada from the "Security and Prosperity Partnership" that seeks to forge an anti-democratic North American Union, would require the tearing up of the neo-colonial "Free Trade" Agreement. Through the use of American Freedom of Information Access laws, the Coalition of to Block the North American Union reveals the Mr. Mulroney and his colleagues was apparently negotiating away Canada behind closed doors, while at the same time, making insincere public relations statements to Canadians.