This election took place at the intersection of the two great global movements of the latter part of the 20th century: the rise of economic and political freedom, and the resurgence of nationalism as a political force.

The significance of the result lies in the alignment of the two as they apply to Canada: rather than the move to open markets colliding head-on with nationalist feeling, as one might expect from our past, they now pull in the same direction, as they will with ever-greater power and sureness of each other: a tandem in harness. Rather than defeat free trade, nationalism - first in Quebec, and spreading across the country - carried it to victory.

In decisively rejecting traditional economic nationalism, Canadians have declared for a new nationalism: one that no longer seeks to exclude the fearsome wider world, but to embrace it. In renouncing fear, we free ourselves; in the light of the outside world, we find ourselves. Like the boy in Frank O'Connor's story, we have thrown our caps over the wall, and now must follow.

The next years will witness, I predict, a surge of pride and confidence in ourselves such as we have not seen since the century began; a glorious shouting adolescent exuberance at the discovery that without the barriers, we still survive and prosper: that the bike stays upright after the training wheels are off. And the more we understand this, the less will we tolerate the barriers that remain. They will seem not only unnecessary, but childish and demeaning.

In 10 or 15 years' time, the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement will have become as sacrosanct as the Auto Pact, indeed as medicare is today. For the Tories, the party of free trade, it holds the promised title of Natural Governing Party. Small wonder that the Liberals so bitterly opposed it. A despondent Sir Robert Borden confided to his diary the day the reciprocity pact of 1911 was unveiled that it would guarantee the Grits a majority for 50 years; John Turner must fear much the same.

HOPE OVER HATE

But Borden's later triumph shows what enormous political courage was required to embark on such an undertaking. That is the second importance of this victory: had free trade been defeated, it would have meant that no government, especially no Tory government, would ever try anything difficult or controversial or radical ever again. It would mean that empty ranting slogans could beat reasoned argument; that savage, know-nothing hostility to foreigners was a stronger animus than quiet, considered confidence in the future. But not so: we have today the triumph of hope over hate.

The effect has been to radicalize many Tories. They campaigned on the greatest issue in Canadian economic history. They put the free market case, and won. The revelation that at long last the Tories stand for something has inspired a new fervor in the troops: they are now mobilized for markets, and will grow restless if kept in the barracks.

Above all, this election should teach the Tories not to treat the people with such condescension as to think they cannot understand arguments for the market. Make the effort to persuade, challenge accepted conventions, and you find the voters have surprisingly open and lively minds. The unthinkable becomes thinkable the moment someone thinks it.

In fact, had the opposition parties campaigned on a pure protectionist platform they would have been destroyed. That is why they were forced to resort to terrorism. People are willing to listen to economic sense. What they yearn for, as the Tories took so long to learn, is simple, straight talk. Where evasion and equivocation go before, trouble for the Tories always follows. When they say and do exactly what they mean, they are rewarded.

By contrast, the clearer became the opposition message, the less people liked it. The voters were too long kept in the dark about free trade; and in the dark, all manner of imagined monsters lurk. But however thrilling Turner's scary stories seemed the night of the debate, they withered in the light of examination.

This must not be forgotten. To someone must fall the task of compiling and maintaining an archive of all the desperate things that were said in the bid to block free trade. For what will the Liberals and the NDP say, 10 years hence, when free trade is fully in force, and the Great Lakes have not been drained, and the Prairie topsoil has not been lifted into the sky, and the sick are still cared for, and pensions remain, and gun laws stay in place, and all the other cries of doom have been disproven?

And what on earth will those, such as some in the media and universities, who were inexhaustible in their opposition to the FTA, find to do with themselves, now that free trade is (almost) a reality? One can only appeal to the government to put in place a generous adjustment program.