Today’s anniversary is one that definitely seems so very far away now in this, the age of Donald Trump. It was on this date in 1992 that Canada, the United States and Mexico all agreeing to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The talks had originally only involved the US and Mexico, but Prime Minister Brian Mulroney insisted on Canadian participation.
“By signing the North American free trade agreement, we've committed ourselves to a better future for our children and for generations yet unborn,” President George H.W. Bush said at his country’s signing ceremony. “This agreement will remove barriers to trade and investment across the two largest undefended borders of the globe and link the United States in a permanent partnership of growth with our first and third largest trading partners. The peace and friendship that we've long enjoyed as neighbors will now be strengthened by the explosion of growth and trade let loose by the combined energies of our 360 million citizens trading freely across our borders.”
Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist. He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy. A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.