Since some time in January, long before Justin Trudeau stared into a camera and told he-who-shall-not-be-named his choice to levy tarrifs on Canadian goods was “a very dumb thing to do,” an old song has been running on a loop in my overloaded Canadian brain.

It’s called “Sons and Daughters,” released way, way back in 1989 by the independent Canadian band Chalk Circle. In case you weren’t around, or your memory is no longer cluttered with small details from when you were 14 or 15, here are the lyrics:

I’ve got news for you
This could pull you under
We were drifting upstream
On some useless lumber
Headed past the tree line
To the northern colours
It got a bit confusing at the American border
This isn’t James Bay now; this is Boston Harbor
Get your life savers out
Sons and Daughters
You ain’t getting much for free
They got love for you
Naked in Hollywood
They see gold in your trees and gold in your people
They’ll be panning for it in your water
I couldn’t get back home
Not with the president’s blessing
Would you vote for me
Sons and Daughters
You ain’t getting much for free
Sons and daughters
Happiness isn’t free

© 1989 (Chalk Circle, As the Crow Flies) Songwriters unknown — please contact me if you know the names.

There isn’t much friendly neighbour sentiment in this song, but its mood is driven by an historical event: the first free trade agreement between Canada and the U.S., which came into force in 1989.

If you were a politically aware 14-year-old, as I was, even living in a small British Columbia town, as I did, you knew one thing in 1989: free trade was bad. Free trade would kill the Canadian economy. It would send everything we value south to the U.S. and we would get nothing in return.

Of course these “facts” were a matter of perspective. They were driven by fears, opinions, and speculation. No one really knew what free trade would bring, but the fact that its champion was conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney was enough for the opposition parties to at least claim it would harm workers and that sacred political constituency, working families.

Let’s step back and consider where Mark, our current caretaker Prime Minister, was in 1989. Judging by the rough dates on the resume, he would be one year out from his undergraduate Harvard graduation, probably doing graduate work at Oxford. (I get distracted by details here. Did he graduate from high school at 18? Did he go to Harvard immediately after graduation? Did he do his BA in four years or more? But I digress.)

So, as Canada was implementing its first free trade agreement with the U.S., Mark was already well on his way to becoming a well-credentialed economist. (I at this time was in a new school, in a new town, since my family had moved north in British Columbia from one small somewhat isolated community in the interior to an even more isolated community on the coast.)

Let’s remember Mark doesn’t come from wealth. He got financial aid to go to Harvard. This whole issue of class is part of what I am sorting through in this blog to clear my Canadian head leading up to April 28. But I’ll leave that for another post, another day.

And the Canada-U.S. trading agreements evolved. After the first deal (CUSFTA), we got NAFTA and CUSMA (or USCMA, if you’re south). These later deals brought Mexico into the fold.

So if these agreements are in force, how can we be in a trade war with the U.S.? How can Mexico?

That’s a brlliant question. Let’s say a president, hypothetically he-who-shall-not-be-named, decides he doesn’t want free trade anymore. Let’s say he wants to impose tariffs on Canada and Mexico. Is that legal?

Also tricky. The unilateral action of a U.S. president to impose tariffs might violate domestic U.S. law because Congress is supposed to hold the purse strings. It also likely violates our trade agreements and Canada might win if we were to take the issue to the World Trade Organization (WTO) for adjudication.

But let’s remember that an international trade agreement is just a contract. And what happens if you violate a contract? The other party can sue you. They might win, they might not, and the process would take years and ruin any trust between you (if there had been any real trust to begin with). You would likely never be in business together again.

Is that a way of saying we should be out of business with the United States? Not exactly. But as I’m nearing the end of my post I offer a few takeaways:

• Canada went 122 years (if my math is correct) without a free trade pact with the U.S. I assume we had other deals and transactional agreements prior to that, but we didn’t have free trade.
• Either side can just decide they don’t want to abide by the agreement. By placing trust in these agreements, we are also putting trust in the other parties to uphold their terms and to follow adjudication procedures. If one party says to hell with the system, the entire agreement mechanism falls apart.
• Fundamentally, free trade in and of itself is not good or bad. It just sets the parameters within which economies work. Economies adjust their systems according to whatever parameters are set.
• Mark Carney was born in 1965 and he graduated Harvard in 1988. That would make him 23 upon graduation. It took me 5 1/2 years to do my (first) undergraduate degree so, you know what, I was technically 23 when I graduated too. So no judgment. I’m just curious if he took a gap year or had a side gig as a bouncer in an underground club in Providence.

What all of this means is that what Mark Carney is talking about, remaking the Canadian economy, might actually be necessary. And this is where Mark Carney the candidate and the historical moment coincide. More on that in the next post.