he initiative in legislation related to commerce. Countervailing andretaliatory duties were placed on incoming goods. Canadian exports offish, meat products, iron and steel, and forest and agricultural productswere favourite targets. In these circumstancesCanada began to seek an agreement on trade, and, indeed, before the1980s were out, a Free Trade Agreement was achieved. The most importantpart of the FTA was a "disputes settlement mechanism" by which Canada hopedto stop United States neo protectionism from piecemeal destruction of itsexports to that country. The subsequent North American Free Trade Agreementseems to have been motivated more by an attempt to get a market as largeas possible, and to permit the exploitation of comparative advantagesthroughout the continent: a matter of intercontinental competition, North America, vs. Asia, vs. Europe. Tarnished Golden and Silver Ages In the 1990s Canada accepted its attachment to the North American Continentand its need to find a different entry into world markets, particularlya niche in the market for manufactured goods. Of course, a strong vestigial reliance on primary products remained, particularly in WesternCanada. Atlantic Canada is a more complicated case. The west continuedto rely on exports of primary products to rapidly industrializaingAsian countries. Despite its general acceptance of the new globalsituation, Canada remained in recession with sluggish productivty gainsthrough the middle of the 1990s. In 1996 the economy of North America seems to have bottomed out. In 1997and 1998, employment grew, productivity grew, inflation remained low.GDP grew at an acceptable 3% to 4%. The United States, perhaps because ithad accepted the readjustment process of downsizing, privatizing,deregulation, and reduction in wages, more than Canada had, [but morelikely because Canada had a more sever adjustment to make, and had to copewith internal political problems related to the structure of th...
