The students bent on preventing prosperity for ordinary people by agitating against the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas should have waited a day with their announcement of their protest (Gazette, Oct 29). Then they could have read the statements made by the president of Mexico, Vincente Fox, at the NAFTA meeting in Ecuador (Gazette, Oct. 29, "Canada dragging heels, Mexican president says"), in which Mr. Fox criticized Canada and the United States for not making more determined efforts to create a more integrated continent similar to the European Union. "We in Mexico have a strong interest in advancing to NAFTA-plus," he said, and how right he is.
Young people today can simply not imagine the poverty in Europe at the time the predecessor organization of the EU was founded. And what do we find now? A rich continent, a prosperity in which all classes of people participate, a prosperity basically founded on free trade. Yet nobody ever proposed to interfere with the individual states' education or health development, which gradually became superior to what now exists in North America. This is what the students oppose?
Organizing marches and strikes is a lot of fun, particularly when you know that no personal disadvantage will ever result from them. But our privileged students would serve their community much better by sticking to their studies and by strongly supporting free trade, instead of engaging in mindless negativism.
L. F. Thomay
Montreal
FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. NoNonsense English offers this material non-commercially for research and educational purposes. I believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C § 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, i.e. the media service or newspaper which first published the article online and which is indicated at the top of the article unless otherwise specified.