Free trade opponents

tackie Tories on

FREE TRADE.

October 24, 1988 SO

Vol. 51, No. 39

e Kt yf y =

4 xy

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

RS

recpat cesses