Defying Conventional Wisdom: Political Movements and Popular Contention Against North American Free Trade

This book offers a crisp and thoughtful account of political phenomena still fresh in the minds of Canadians, and with continuing relevance to policy-making processes. As the first major work on the origins, strategies, and activities of movements and coalitions that arose in Canada and spread across North America to oppose free trade, it captures an important developmental period in Canadian political life.

Focusing on an analysis of the Action Canada Network, Jeffrey Ayres adopts a political-process model to link the emergence of popular sector movements and transnational networks to constraints posed by the Canada-US FTA and NAFTA. His extensive use of popular writings and interviews highlights the personal reflections of coalition members and provides an intimate perspective on their strategies and actions. As a contribution both to the study of recent developments in Canadian politics and to our understanding of emerging transnational contention in North America, Defying Conventional Wisdom will appeal to readers across a wide spectrum of interests and backgrounds.

University of Toronto Press gratefully acknowledges that this book was sponsored in part by the Association for Canadian Studies in the U.S. and by the Government of Canada.