Decision at Midnight

As an export-oriented nation, Canada has always seen trade as inextricably connected to its political and social identity. In particular, the quest for free trade with the United States has, from pre-Confederation days, been a dominant theme in Canadian history. Decision at Midnight is the story of the achievement of that goal, as told by three insiders intimately involved with the free-trade negotiations.

On 2 January 1988, Canada and the United States signed what was then the most comprehensive free-trade agreement that the world had seen. This book is the story of the FTA negotiations themselves, the preparations for and conduct of the negotiations, as well as the ideas and issues that were behind them. From their unique perspective as participants, Hart, Dymond, and Robertson capture the drama and the personalities involved in the long struggle to make a free-trade deal.

They describe the extensive consultations, the turf-fighting among insiders, the innate caution of both politicians and bureaucrats, and the need to cultivate powerful constituencies in order to overcome the inertia of conventional wisdom.