THE RECORD
October 09, 2002

Fiat Lux

by Ed Deak

The presently ongoing royal visit shown on TV brought back a funny story of my only brush with royalty, good many years ago.

I grew up in and arch conservative, royalist family, who were always dreaming about the Habsburg royalty coming back to Hungary and bringing back the good old days. My poor mother never forgave me for becoming an apprentice cabinetmaker at the ripe age of 28. "With your education you could have become somebody, not a manual worker.....etc!", she used to write.

The "somebody" for her was a "gentleman" who sits in an office, in a dress suit with a collar and a tie around his neck. For me it would have meant an early suicide, as I can't think of a more horrible punishment than working in an air conditioned office, adding and subtracting figures that mean nothing to anybody. Now I don't even have a suit to my name and can't remember when I last wore a tie..

Her opinion changed in a hurry, some time in the mid, or late '60s, when the Hudson's Bay Co. ordered a carving of their ancient coat of arms from me, to be presented to the Queen. Around the same time, I also had a contract from Woodward's for the remodeling of the royal suite in the Hotel Vancouver, ready for one of her visits.

However, she stayed on her yacht, and I don't think she ever slept in the bed I made, but the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret have, which was good enough for my Mom, as then I became "my son the Royal supplier" and all was forgiven.... Well, at least until we quit the city and moved up to the Cariboo to our farm. That was far too much for her. She could never understand how a royal supplier could have sunk to the depth of becoming a "peasant."

Now let us go back to the campaign of "selling" the so called "free trade" to the Canadian public in the late '80's, in other words, the colonizing and the sale of the nation to make a few people rich at the cost of the loss of sovereignty and the democratic decision making rights of the vast majority.
Right after his 1984 election victory Mulroney increased the staff of the Prime Minister's Office by 33 percent, its budget by 57 percent and established an unofficial propaganda ministry under Bill Fox and later Hugh Segal. This is just like Gordon Campbell has done from last year in the Premier's office, obviously to "sell" his Alliance/Fraser Institute based economic theories to the public, which he is stripping of their rights, powers, services and properties.

On Sept. 20, 1985, the Toronto Star published a leaked document, allegedly by Bill Fox of the PMO, outlining the strategy of lies and deceit to mislead the public on the real purpose and effects of free trade. I still have it and it is one of the most disgusting pieces of filth I've seen since my days under the Nazis and the communists. It didn't work. Opinion polls showed a consistent increase of anti FTA sentiment and by early 1988 Mulroney was down to about 12% approval rating. That was when big business really got into the act and started pouring money into the campaign to mislead the public.

The promises of "wealth and prosperity" the FTA would bring ranged from the ridiculous to the sublime, with our so called "prestigious conservative economic think tanks" outdoing each other in who can tell the biggest lies for the biggest fees. The C.D. Howe Institute predicted that women would be the biggest winners. Judith Maxwell of the Economic Council promised 250,000 new jobs for women.

The same Economic Council forecast that 188,000 jobs would be lost to free trade, but 439,000 gained. How on Earth anybody could come up with such ridiculous figures and who would pay for them is beyond comprehension? Yet, the writers of such garbage, to this very day, are not only the recipients of PhDs in economics, but often teach this garbage in our universities.

Then they made an almost fatal mistake by publishing the text of the FTA and inviting the public to receive free copies. I immediately ordered a set and still have the abbreviated version, although I gave away the large set to a student for his Master's studies. The glaring inconsistencies, contradictions and sellout of the country immediately became the subjects of many legal and economic studies, with papers published by individuals and organizations like Action Canada, Council of Canadians, Citizens Concerned about Free Trade, etc. outlining the consequences.

John Turner of the Liberal Party made the opposition to the FTA his main campaign strategy, with Ed Broadbent of the NDP a distant second, a very serious mistake that helped Mulroney. Another mistake was when Action Canada sent out a detailed critique to every household in Canada far too soon, with the wrong timing.

At the same time a strong faction within the Liberal Party started a campaign to discredit and replace John Turner as the Leader during the election campaign. Of course, the controlled media lapped it up and the public who hated Mulroney were confused.

I received a phone call from one of Turner's personal friends and top aides, a man I knew since his UBC days and we discussed the coming up TV debate of the Leaders. Mulroney ran circles around Turner in 1984 by using some elementary propaganda gimmicks and virtually hypnotizing him. My friend knew something of my background in the field of propaganda busting and I explained how Mulroney was using his hands and theatrical expressions to mesmerize an opponent. I have no idea whether anything we talked about ever got back to Turner, but, although there were no clear winners in the debate, Turner was voted as the best.

I'm still wondering whether the anti Turner campaign may have been organized by Chrétien and pro free trade supporters to undercut their own Party and give the election of '88 to Mulroney and ensure the passing of the FTA? We may never know the truth, but when Chrétien was elected later on the promise of renegotiating the NAFTA, he signed it in virtual secret, without public hearings and consultations and kept the text hidden. Very interesting coincidence?

Then the Business Council under Thomas D'Aquino got into the act, pouring millions into the pro FTA campaign with more send outs to households and public opinion began to sway in support of Mulroney, then started to drop, but too late. He got his majority and Canada was sold out with a 43 percent support of the voters. Had the election been held a few days later, Mulroney would have lost.

After the whole thing was over, US Trade chief Clayton Yeutter was quoted in the press: "The Canadians don't know what they've signed. In twenty years they'll be absorbed into the US economy." Well, we're on the way, with Chrétien now negotiating the FTAA and GATS with the support of the Alliance and PC while the food bank and soup kitchen lines are growing by the hour.

Copyright (c) 2002, West's International