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FREE TRADE AND THE NEW RIGHT AGENDA.

Warnock, John W.

Vancouver, New Star Books. 1988. 324pp, paper, ISBN 0-919573-80-0 (cloth) $19.95, 0-919573-79-7 (paper) $11.95. CIP

Grades 12 and up
Reviewed by Louise Dick

Volume 17 Number 1
1989 January


Free trade as analysed by Warnock is not only a threat to Canadian sovereignty but also and especially a "class issue." A political scientist at the University of Regina, Warnock has published three previous books on food supply and Canadian-American relations. His viewpoint dominates this discussion of free trade's past, present and future.

According to Warnock, big business, with its "hidden agenda" of the New Right economic program, will be the sole beneficiary. Warnock lumps free trade in with deregulation, military spending and reduction of social services—the "props of capitalism." He finds the Canadian political system 'Very undemocratic" and advocates some unspecified form of "popular democracy" and "planned economy" as a replacement for parliamentary government and free enterprise.

After surveying the impact of free trade including Canada/U.S. "economic and political integration," Warnock devotes seven chapters to "alternative strategies" for Canada. There is much generalizing but few specifics. He rejects the NDP and advocates proportional representation, wide use of referendum and recall, but does not explain how he would "bring capital under democratic control."

There is a list of "selected references" but no index and no notes. Only the tables in the text are fully identified as to source; other documentation is missing or incomplete.


Louise Dick, Toronto, Ont.
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