In the course of a long and mostly undistinguished career in public life, Art Eggleton has rarely been accused of vision. In his previous cabinet posts, as President of the Treasury Board and minister responsible for the infrastructure program, Eggleton went about the land sprinkling bits of pork this way and that, like the city hall pothole-fixer he once was.

But since taking over as Trade minister, Eggleton seems to have undergone some sort of profound spiritual transformation -- possibly a mid-life crisis, maybe a visit to a Tibetan lama, I don't know. However it is explained, the change has been remarkable. After stumbling at the start in negotiations with the Americans over softwood lumber quotas, the minister began showing signs of intellectual life in January, with his now-famous speech in Toronto questioning the continued relevance of Canada's Maginot Line of cultural trade barriers.

Questioning, to be sure, is about as far as he went. But given the fetal- position timidity with which most federal ministers approach the cultural industries, Eggleton's gentle probing of the issue might as well have been the 95 Theses. Even Roy MacLaren, his much-admired predecessor, known for his scorching enthusiasm for free trade, had not dared broach the subject.

And now this South American business. It popped up last week during the Prime Minister's visit to Washington, an event made notable otherwise only by the Canadian media's obsession with whether relations between Jean Chretien and Bill Clinton were "cozy" or merely "warm." But then the question of trade came up, and Eggleton let slip that Canada, rather than wait for a reluctant U.S. Congress to get on board, would press ahead with the task of expanding free trade throughout the hemisphere.

A free trade agreement of the Americas, embracing not just the members of the North American Free Trade Agreement but all of Central and South America as well, was promised at the Miami Summit in 1994. Free-market- friendly Chile was to be the first to join, with the others to follow by 2005.

But with Congress refusing to grant the president fast-track authority, the United States has remained immobile, unwilling to risk even a free-trade agreement with tiny Chile. Seizing the initiative, Canada signed its own bilateral deal with Chile.

Building on that success, Eggleton has set his sights on bigger goals. While Congress sits on the sidelines, Canada is considering opening trade talks with the Mercosur group of countries, a trade bloc that includes Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay -- perhaps even leading to some sort of associate membership (Chile and Bolivia are also associate members). The aim is not merely to expand bilateral trade ties: two-way trade between Canada and Mercosur totalled just $3-billion in 1996, about as much as Canada and the United States exchange in a busy weekend.

Rather, it is to set in motion an unstoppable dynamic of trade liberalization, a kind of free-trade domino effect in which each new trade agreement spurs others to join, or to form alliances of their own. Canadian firms, under a Mercosur-Canada free trade agreement, would get the jump on their U.S.

competitors in penetrating some of the largest and fastest-growing markets in Latin America. That would give extra ammunition to the trade lobby in Washington, putting pressure on Congress to act. And of course once Mercosur had struck a deal with the Yanquis, the rest of Latin America would be quick to follow. Canada, muses Eggleton, could play "a leadership role" in quickening the march of free trade across the continent.

This is not just speculation. In the decade since the historic Canada-U.S. free trade agreement was signed, the record of progressive bilateralism speaks for itself. Why did Mexico set aside decades of mistrust to open free trade talks with the Americans? Partly to neutralize the competitive advantage Canada had obtained by virtue of its preferential status. Why did Canada then decide to join the talks? To avoid being left as the "spoke" to the U.S. "hub," as would have been the case had North American trade been governed by two separate bilateral deals, with the U.S. the only party common to both.

And why is Canada so keen to push the pace, even now? Partly because the Europeans are snuggling up so close to Mercosur. It is, indeed, a worldwide phenomenon. Rather than retreating behind ever higher tariff walls, nations are protecting their competitive position by a fast multiplying array of regional trade agreements. Far from distorting or balkanizing trade flows, as traditional trade theory would suggest, the very unstable nature of these regional arrangements has created a chain reaction leading to wider and wider free trade areas being formed. And Canada, first under MacLaren and now under Eggleton, has been in the vanguard of this trend.

It's all very puzzling. The minister who once dared to be cautious now leaves himself open to serious charges of vision. Art Eggleton, j'accuse.