Trump's power play has ignited debate about U.S. trade, Canadian sovereignty. Sounds a lot like 1988

Donald Trump's repeated musings about Canada becoming part of the United States have — unsurprisingly — raised hackles in Ottawa.

"There isn't a snowball's chance in hell," shot back Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, while the Finance Minister Dominic Le Blanc noted, "The joke is over." Opposition leaders are similarly irked, with Conservative Pierre Poilievre asserting "Canada will never be the 51st state" and New Democrat Jagmeet Singh telling the incoming president to "cut the crap."

Yet the U.S. president-elect keeps pushing Canada's buttons. He has suggested the highly integrated economies and trading relationship between the two countries is overrated, and has claimed a trade imbalance means U.S. is subsidizing its northern neighbour's economy.

In doing this, Trump has highlighted a persistent concern raised by some on this side of the border: namely, that Canada's national sovereignty is jeopardized by being too closely tied to the United States. 

This isn't a new concern — in fact, it will be familiar to anyone who remembers when Canada first eyed a free-trade deal with the U.S. back in the 1980s, long before Trump's influence extended beyond the Manhattan real estate sector.

During Pierre Trudeau's final years as prime minister, the wheels were set in motion for Canada to consider pursuing a free trade deal with the U.S.

The country had been hit by a recession in the early 1980s, and in 1982, a Royal Commission was set up, led by Donald Macdonald, a former Liberal cabinet minister. Among its goals were to examine the future prospects and challenges for Canada's economy.

When the commission's report came back in 1985, it endorsed seeing Canada seek a path forward on free trade with the U.S. — with an eye to building improved and secure access to the American market, but nonetheless noting that "denial of that access is an ever-present threat." 

Then-prime minister Brian Mulroney, whose Progressive Conservatives had swept to power at the expense of the Liberals a year earlier, was intrigued by what the commission had found. 

"There's a degree of hard work that's evident there and accomplishment and some very interesting ideas that are going to have to be carefully examined," Mulroney said.

Some business leaders were enthused at the prospect of a future free trade deal, while labour groups had strong concerns — including about job losses that could occur.

Not all politicians were on board either.

"If we move towards a free trade arrangement with the United States, I think the political consequences are very clear," said Bob Rae, then the leader of the New Democrats in Ontario.

"Don't ask people who are elected provincially or federally to do a great job in managing the economy because all those decisions are going to be made in New York and Chicago and Washington and we are going to simply become a client of the United States."