Decision at Midnight: Inside the Canada-US Free-Trade Negotiations

Graeme S. Mount is a history professor at Laurentian University and the
author of Canada’s Enemies: Spies and Spying in the Peaceable Kingdom.

This is an insiders’ account of the 1987 Canada- U.S. free-trade
negotiations. Donald Macdonald, chair of the Royal Commission that
recommended such a deal, wrote the foreword. The title reflects the fact
that the negotiations came to a successful conclusion only minutes
before the U.S.-imposed deadline of midnight, October 3, 1987.

The authors make no effort to be impartial. In their view, the 1987
accord was the logical outcome of a process begun in 1846, when Sir
Robert Peel’s government repealed the British Corn Laws. Despite the
authors’ partisan stance, their attractively bound and illustrated
book summarizes the arguments of supporters and adversaries in a fair
and accurate manner. They tell the story in lucid prose (illustrated by
cartoons), item by item and player by player. They reveal that Simon
Reisman, the chief Canadian negotiator, was so anxious for a deal that
at one point (had the Mulroney cabinet permitted) he would have used
Canada’s fresh-water supply as a bargaining chip.

The authors kept daily logs during the free-trade talks and were ready
to go to press after the 1988 Canadian election. Their superiors balked
and, as dutiful civil servants, the trio waited. Now that Mulroney et
al. are history, the story can finally be told. It is a good one.