Mary Janigan is a journalist, author and historian. She spent a decade as a correspondent on Parliament Hill and has written extensively as an historian on such topics as federalism, equalization and Western Canada’s quest for resource control.

Free trade negotiations with the United States have always triggered acrimonious and deeply damaging debates in Canada and often exposed political miscalculations at the highest levels. During the 1911 federal election campaign, Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier, running on a free trade platform, was denounced in Quebec as a traitor to the French and in Ontario as a traitor to the English.

After 15 years as Prime Minister, he had been convinced his Liberal government would ride a reciprocity wave back into office, but his certainty quickly crumbled as Conservative leader Robert Borden cobbled together an unlikely anti-free trade coalition of indignant Quebec nationalists, Central Canadian manufacturers, British Empire imperialists, voters fearful of American annexation and even Liberal political luminaries who had served in Laurier’s cabinet. In vain, Laurier protested that he was simply a patriotic Canadian. The 1911 free trade campaign became, as trade policy expert Michael Hart observed, “one of the meanest election campaigns in Canadian history.”

As the potentially explosive review of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) gets underway, it is instructive to recall that free trade talks with the United States always become difficult, divisive and occasionally very disagreeable. The debates often range far beyond economics into biting challenges about identity and who is truly a good Canadian. Passions run high and reason is often jettisoned as starkly opposing visions of Canada’s future take flight.

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Seller beware!

The damage can linger for decades. The 1911 campaign seared the soul of the nation. Initially invisible to Laurier, the formidable anti-reciprocity lobby featured Tory premiers lamenting a so-called betrayal of Canada’s ties to the Empire and star Liberal deserters such as Laurier’s famed Interior Minister Clifford Sifton, who feared a weakening of Canada’s east-west links would result in American economic dominance.

Borden’s strongest support came from the “Toronto Eighteen” ­– an alliance of banks, manufacturers, insurance firms and railways – that wanted to preserve the protectionism that underwrote their prosperity. Against them, Western farmers and Maritime resource industrialists, who resented tariffs on their equipment imports and their commodity exports, could make little headway. Laurier lost the election. He even lost his long-time seat in Quebec City.

Tense debates over free trade predate Confederation. In 1846, Britain repealed its Corn Laws, effectively ending the preferential entry of Canadian wheat and lumber into the United Kingdom. Canada peered south for expanded markets. In 1854, after five years of tough negotiations, the Governor General of the Canadas, Lord Elgin, secured American consent to a package that enumerated 28 products or groups of products, such as lumber and flour, that could enter the United States without duty. It was a good bargain for the Canadian and Maritime colonies.

But the Americans abrogated the deal in March 1866, partly because Northerners resented Britain’s sympathy for the South during the Civil War. The Fathers of Confederation failed to dissuade the U.S. An economic union north of the border became ever more imperative. Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald’s government attempted to renew reciprocity but was met with rejection. Partly in response, in 1878 the Prime Minister adopted the east-west national policy with its high tariffs, railway building and the settling of the Prairies.

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But late in Macdonald’s tenure, there was also growing discontent across pockets of Canada and the United States. Some U.S. manufacturers wanted tariff reductions to more easily access raw materials and expand their sales in Canada. The newspaper industry advocated noisily for reduced tariffs on pulp and newsprint – and publicized that demand as only it could. Meanwhile, Congress was threatening higher tariffs against discriminatory trading partners like Canada.

Having headed off the threat of higher tariffs with a small cross-border trade deal in 1910, President William Howard Taft opened the door to an expanded pact that would broaden and liberalize relations between the two countries. Each government agreed to enact four tariff schedules that included a duty-free list of agricultural and resource products along with a few manufacturing products as well as another sizable list of manufactured goods that would face identical tariffs in each nation. As political scientist Patrice Dutil and historian David MacKenzie concluded, “it was an offer that Laurier just could not refuse.”

But Canadians could refuse Laurier, an eventuality that had not penetrated his famously sunny ways.

At first, the Liberals were ecstatic. The package granted Western farmers access to the U.S. market along with lower tariffs on their imported equipment. There was improved access in the United States for mineral and forest products. Ontario manufacturers retained their protection.

What could go wrong?

Borden’s Tories were initially confounded by Laurier’s masterful feat. Months passed as discouraged Conservative MPs stalled for time, postponing the passage of the reciprocity deal, and slowly attracting allies such as Montreal and Toronto business executives who opposed the possible threat to their privileges.

Prominent Americans added to Laurier’s political woes: During the U.S. hearings on the package, Speaker-designate Champ Clark mused about his hope that the American flag would eventually float over all of North America, “clear to the north pole.” That hardly helped in rallying Canadians around reciprocity.

Frustrated, in late July, Laurier called an election. The campaign was brutal. The veteran politician’s very identity as a Franco-Catholic from Quebec was questioned. Borden largely left the Quebec campaign to nationalists such as Le Devoir editor Henri Bourassa, who remained acutely suspicious about Laurier’s creation of a Canadian navy in 1910. The nationalists feared that Britain would take control of the navy, dragging Canada into its wars. They depicted free trade as a diversion from the Liberals’ true objective of aiding Britain and they viewed Laurier as an Imperialist sell-out.

Meanwhile, Borden stumped in the rest of Canada as the real patriot. As historian John English noted, he “stirred the emotions of the English Canadian, appealing to his British blood and to his vision of a strong, independent Canada.” The Conservatives captured 134 seats while the Liberals took 87. Reciprocity fell off the table for generations.

Sporadic attempts to revive the free trade dream never went anywhere. In the mid-1930s, Canada and the United States produced minor trading agreements – to little effect. After the Second World War, Prime Minister Mackenzie King secretly negotiated a free trade deal with the United States but scuttled it over fears of history repeating itself. As Dutil and Mackenzie observed, he was “haunted by the spectre of ending his career like his beloved hero Sir Wilfrid Laurier.”

Finally, in 1988, Canada and the United States concluded their first Free Trade Agreement (FTA) since 1866, which sparked another searing campaign. Political leaders besmirched each other’s patriotism. All parties predicted dire social, political, economic and even cultural consequences if the pact passed ­– or if it did not. They rallied furious supporters, dividing and alarming voters. The Conservatives prevailed with a plurality of the votes – and the FTA took effect on January 1, 1989. But the resemblance to the 1911 election campaign was too raw for comfort.

The sky did not fall and soon a free trade consensus emerged among the major political parties. The 1994 inclusion of Mexico in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was controversial but not as divisive. But Canada’s increased dependence on the United States and the threatening rhetoric from Donald Trump in his first term served as a warning that a North American free trade zone couldn’t be taken for granted even as the renamed USMCA (or CUSMA to Canadians) took effect.

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Still, it is the lessons from the 1911 election that Canadians should keep in mind today: that the political course can be unpredictable; that the economic case alone doesn’t carry the day; that time is on the side of those who sow doubts and fears; that identity is always a factor; that nothing should be taken for granted. All wins must be earned. And be prepared for the possibility of passion outrunning reason.