Review  Prime Ministers  Louis St. Laurent  John Diefenbaker  Lester B. Pearson  Pierre Trudeau  Joe Clark and John Turner both briefly in the early 1980’s

Pierre Trudeau

Brian Mulroney  Brian Mulroney of the Progressive Conservatives was PM from  After being lobbied by anti- nuclear groups, Mulroney decided not to involve Canada in the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) also known as “Star Wars”  Generally, he tightened links with the USA. He negotiated the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the USA  Free trade is seen by some as a threat to our independence and by others as a great economic opportunity

NAFTA  Brian Mulroney developed NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) with the USA and Mexico in 1992  By this time, he was extremely unpopular and he resigned in 1993  He was replaced by Kim Campbell  She lasted only a few months, before losing the election to Jean Chrétien  Chrétien signed NAFTA in 1994  Canada became much more closely linked to the USA economically and politically

The Fall of the USSR  In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev became leader of the USSR  He wanted to reform the USSR and make it a freer and more open society (Glasnost)  He also wanted economic reform (Perestroika)  By this time, the USSR could not afford its arms race with the USA  The liberalizations spun out of hand when the Berlin Wall was knocked down in 1989 and Germany reunited  The USSR fell apart in 1991, along with all the communist countries in Eastern Europe

The First Gulf War

 In August 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait  As the lone superpower, the USA led a UN force to free Kuwait  This included Canada  After the war, George Bush (sr.) said that in the New World Order the UN would be used in a peacemaking role

Somalia  In 1992 the UN intervened in the Somali Civil War to supply food to the starving population  Canada was part of a scandal after several of our soldiers tortured and killed a Somali teen  The UN abandoned Somalia in 1993 after an American Blackhawk helicopter was shot down

Rwanda  Ethnic tensions between the Hutus and Tutsis of Rwanda boiled over into civil war  In 1994, the majority Hutus murdered around 1 million Tutsis and moderate Hutus (20% of the population)  A UN force was sent under Canadian General Romeo Dallaire, however, Dallaire was not given enough support by the UN and USA to stop the genocide

Yugoslav Wars  The fall of communism in Yugoslavia was a painful one  The Serbs reacted the separation of Croatia and Slovenia with war in 1991  Ethnic cleansing occurs on both sides  When Bosnia declared independence in 1992, both Croatia and Serbia attack to claim land  Bosnia was ravaged and an estimated 100,000 people were killed  20-50,000 women were raped

 Ethnic cleansing was also occurring in Kosovo  Canadian and NATO troops were sent to these conflicts, although they often did not prevent the worst massacres, such as the one at Srebrenica, where 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were murdered

More recently…  The invasion of Afghanistan following the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001  Canada plays a major role within NATO within this UN sanctioned war  The American invasion of Iraq in 2003  Canada did not fight in this war and the UN and NATO did not sanction it