Choosing Free Trade

The Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada, of which I was the chair, dealt with a range of issues involving the political and economic challenges that Canada faced at the beginning of the 1980s. The one set of recommendations with the greatest éclat was that Canada enter into a free trade agreement with the United States. In Continentalizing Canada: The Politics and Legacy of the Macdonald Royal Commission, Gregory Inwood has written a detailed retrospective on how the commission was formed, how its members and staff were recruited, and the manner in which they went about their work. To this study he brings the discipline of political science, and he has the advantage of nearly two decades of perspective on both the commission and the trade issue. One unique resource upon which he has been able to draw is a wide-ranging set of interviews he conducted in 1993–94 with many of those involved in the commission’s work. Those of us...