THE EFFECT OF THE FREE TRADE AGREEMENT ON CANADA'S ENERGY RESOURCES

The inclusion of energy in the Free Trade Agreement (fta) illustrates perhaps better than any other provision in the agreement that the basic objective of this treaty was not the elimination of tariffs between Canada and the U.S.A. but the creation of a new economic order for Canada, which would limit the power of the nation-state to intervene in the economy. By the time the FTA came into effect at the beginning of 1989, Canada and the U.S.A. had already established virtually a free-trade relationship in energy commodities. The previously existing National Energy Program had been dismantled by the federal Conservative government by June of 1985 and this was followed by a process of thoroughgoing deregulation in all spheres of energy under federal jurisdiction. With the coming into force of the FTA, the newly deregulated Canadian energy economy became an irrevocable and permanent feature of Canada's energy relations with the United States.