Free trade opponents

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FREE TRADE.

October 24, 1988
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Vol. 51, No. 39

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Lorraine Chisholm joins 200 other demonstrators outside Finance Minister Michael Wilson’s luncheon at Hotel Vancouver
Wednesday. Rally was called by Citizens Concerned About Free Trade.

Opponents of the Canada-U.S. trade
deal were out on the hustings in force
again this week as some 200 people, organ-
ized by Citizens Concerned About Free
Trade, demonstrated outside Finance Min-
Ister Michael Wilson’s luncheon meeting
at the Hotel Vancouver Wednesday.

Wilson was addressing a $50-a-plate
lunch put on by the Vancouver Board of

trade, one of dozens of business audien-
Ces that Tory cabinet ministers have been
_ Addressing in their campaign to sell the
trade deal along with the government’s
Te-election.

Like most of the meetings, it was a
Carefully-controlled forum, intended to
Create a national impression that the trade
deal is welcomed on every doorstep.

But outside the meeting, demonstrators
Presented a scene that is being repeated
gain and again on television screens: the

more they go out in public, the more Tory
ministers are encountering vocal opposi-
tion to the Reagan-Mulroney trade
agreement. :
Concerned Citizens organizers also
emphasized at Wednesday’s rally that the
overwhelming majority of Canadians
simply don’t know what is in the Reagan-
Mulroney trade deal. And opponents of
the trade deal are doing their best to make
sure the facts get out over the next 30-odd
days of the election campaign.
The issue assumed a higher profile this
week following the two-day nationally-
televised debate on free trade staged by
CBC’s The Journal on Monday and
Tuesday. Canadian Auto Workers Union
president Bob White and Council of Can-
adians chair Maude Barlow, both leading
opponents of the deal, squared off against
Thomas D’ Aquino, president of the Busi-

ness Council on National Issues, and
former Alberta premier Peter Lougheed, a
member of the Canadian Alliance for
Trade and Job Opportunities, the lobby
group set up by big business to sell the
deal.

As he has done virtually since the trade
deal was made public, D’Aquino dis-
missed all concerns about threats to
national sovereignty or social programs
posed by the deal and chided opponents
for “lacking confidence in Canada.”

But White presented a dramatic dem-
onstration of free trade’s effects, pointing
to the recent closure of Fleck Manufactur-
ing, an Ontario auto parts manufacturer
which shut down its Canadian operations
and moved to Mexico and the southern
U.S. Some 200 workers lost their jobs in

see CAMPAIGN page 3

_ Alberta government put brute force —

Police on to Lubicon land to remove _
Lake band and to arrest those taking
_ Although few details were available

- Lubicon reserve were set to begin Fri-_

As it has done for 48 years, the

before negotiations Thursday as it
moved Royal Canadian Mounted |

the blockade put up by the Lubicon —
part... :

at Tribune press time, initial reports
stated that some 35 armed RCMP |

_Earlier story, page 6

officers moved in early Thursday
morning and forcibly removed the _
six-day-old blockade and arrested
those present. The police were report- _
edly acting on orders from the Alberta

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