The Canadian Labour Congress: From Continentalism to Economic Nationalism

Abstract

The English Canadian labour movement, under the leadership of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), played an important role in the anti-free trade campaign. For the Congress, the campaign was the culmination of a fifteen-year battle against continentalism. Yet, during an earlier series of debates on Canada's economic and political relationship with the United States - the debates of the sixties - the CLC had taken quite a different tack; instead of supporting the nationalist position, it had defended the role of US capital in Canada and resisted the Waffle's attempt to link Canadian economic, political and cultural sovereignty with socialism.