Drama over free trade. Dark mutterings about economic calamities to come. An impeccably groomed politician named Mulroney out working the campaign trail.Canadians could be forgiven for thinking, just for a moment, that 30 years had never passed.U.S. President Donald Trump took time out from his myriad problems, domestic and distant, to kick a little sand north of the border this week.Unhappy with the North American Free Trade Agreement currently being renegotiated, Trump told a gathering of state governors that Canada has “a belief that it’s wonderful.“It is, for them. Not wonderful for us,” he said.“Canada,” Trump groused, presumably with our stylish, nicely haired prime minister in mind, “is very smooth.”Smooth?POTUS doesn’t know the half of it.The true smooth operator in this country’s pursuit of free trade with the United States was former prime minister Brian Mulroney, father of Caroline, currently running for the leadership of Ontario’s hilariously fractious Progressive Conservative party.Mulroney’s free-trade story even stands as evidence that former Ontario PC leader Patrick Brown — the very man his daughter is seeking to succeed — is hardly the first pol given to drastic changes of mind.In 1983, running for the federal PC leadership, Brian Mulroney opposed “unfettered free trade” with the U.S.Even as he famously crooned “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” with President Ronald Reagan at the so-called Shamrock Summit in Quebec City in 1985, his cabinet assumed he still felt that way.Not so.Three developments had occurred. A protectionist swing in the U.S. The move by Europe to a common trading bloc. And a report by the Macdonald Royal Commission recommending Canada take a “leap of faith” into a free-trade agreement with the U.S.And leap Mulroney did, smoothly of course.When talks got boggy, Mulroney threatened to withdraw Canada’s chief ...
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