The Future of Free Trade in the American Continent: The Canadian Policy

In this article, the autor describes Canada's pro free trade philosophy from Its participation in the foundation of GATT In 1947, to the signing of the free trade agreements with the United States in 1989 and with Mexico, within the context of NAFTA, in 1994. The author then analyzes the effect of Canadas’s membership in the Organization of American States, in 1990, on the equilibrium of Inter American relations which were untiI that time dominated by the UnitedStates and the after effects of the Monroe policy and the Cold War. Will the historcial UnitedStates-LatinAmerica bipolarization lead to a more balanced multilateralism by the time the Free Trade Area of the Americas is established? This is the challenge for Canadian policy at the regularly-held Summits of the Americas whose goal is to create such an area before the year 2005