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The new defense accord upset some Canadians, who fear that it could involve their country in Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, the space-based antimissile defense system better known as Star Wars. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger added to Canadian distress when he suggested in a television interview that American missiles could be stationed in Canada.
The President agreed with Mulroney on the need to eliminate barriers to U.S.-Canadian trade. The two men joined in a pledge to fight protectionism and to take steps to ease the flow of both goods and investment across the border. Both countries asked special representatives to have their first recommendations ready in six months.
Reagan repaid Mulroney's hospitality in another way by offering the Prime Minister a sop on acid-rain pollution, which has long been a sore spot in U.S.-Canadian relations. Canadians charge that at least half the acid rain currently damaging their forests and destroying aquatic life in their lakes is caused by sulfur and nitrogen oxides released into the atmosphere by fossil- fuel-burning plants and smelters in the U.S. The Reagan Administration has maintained that the evidence against U.S. industry is incomplete.
Knowing that Mulroney could not go back to Ottawa without at least some concession on acid rain, Administration officials came up with a plan to appoint a joint U.S.-Canadian team to examine the issue. The President and the Prime Minister announced that former Transportation Secretary Drew Lewis and former Ontario Premier William Davis would be named special envoys to seek ways of combating the problem. Said Mulroney: "We have broken a three-year deadlock by agreeing to our common and shared responsibility to preserve our common environment." Added Reagan: "I couldn't be happier about getting this under way and off dead center." The agreement, however, did not actually commit the Reagan Administration to take any action on acid rain.
For Reagan, the meeting was a triumph, and he returned to Washington satisfied that his time in Quebec had been well spent. "You can laugh and smirk," a senior Administration official told U.S. reporters after the summit ended, "but in my view this will go down as the most productive meeting in U.S.-Canadian history." What particularly delighted Reagan was that after years of often strained relations, Canada and the U.S. were once again getting along and working together on mutual defense. Washington has made no secret of its concern about the "nuclear allergy" that recently led New Zealand to bar from its harbors nuclear-powered or nuclear-armed U.S. Navy vessels. Administration officials believe that Reagan's achievements in Quebec City will strengthen his hand in dealing with other U.S. allies and in disarmament talks currently under way with the Soviet Union in Geneva.