The impact of free trade on employment and wages in the Canadian service sector, 1987--1998.

On January 1, 1989, the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (FTA) was implemented. In the pre free trade era, there were countless debates engaged in by Canadians about the future of jobs and wages as a result of the agreement. In 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect. The defining characteristic of NAFTA was the modifying of the FTA agreement to accommodate Mexico. With the implementation of this agreement, Canadians continued to hold heated debates about jobs and the issue of wages became more prominent. Wages were a pertinent issue in the NAFTA debate because many Canadians feared that they would have to compete with lower Mexican worker wage levels. Throughout the free trade debate, proponents of free trade maintained that there would be significant job and wage increases, while opponents of free trade feared job and wage decreases. This thesis examines specifically the impacts on Canadian service sector jobs and wages during the implementation of the FTA and NAFTA. After examining employment and wage level data in the period 1987--1998, it was concluded that the Canadian service sector was not negatively affected as a result of free trade as many opponents of free trade maintained, nor did it benefit as greatly as proponents argued. Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 39-02, page: 0375. Adviser: Debora VanNijnatten. Thesis (M.A.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 2000