Word: agreements
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Dates: during 1990-1990
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...deadline loomed, three provincial governments balked at ratification. Mulroney waited until the final weeks before the deadline to call the ten provincial premiers to Ottawa for a weeklong marathon of closed- door constitutional bargaining to win the dissidents over. The political leaders emerged with the original Meech Lake agreement unchanged. What broke the standoff was an agreement to seek reform -- or at least reapportionment -- for Canada's appointed Senate, which underrepresents the west. The ministers further committed themselves to discuss aboriginal self-government, minority-language rights and guarantees of sexual equality...
Even if the Meech Lake agreement wins unanimous approval, many Quebeckers feel that greater provincial control of such areas as communications and taxation is inevitable. Says Pierre Laurin, head of Quebec operations for Merrill Lynch Canada: "People here have realized that Quebec needs a new sort of arrangement...
...arrangement, of course, would demand even more wearying constitutional debates. But if Manitoba and Newfoundland (which joined Canada only in 1949) fail to meet the Meech deadline, or reject the agreement, the issue to be debated may be Quebec's separation. Canada, which frets constantly about maintaining a separate identity from the U.S., could then lose the bilingual and bicultural character that is the country's greatest difference from its powerful neighbor...
...capital the telephone company, which six months ago charged $160 to install an overseas line, now asks foreign companies to pay $20,800. The Bolshoi and Kirov ballet troupes have licensed their names in Europe, and the British promoter who put that deal together has signed an agreement to slap the prestigious titles on soap, shoes, perfume and panty hose in the U.S. Says Peter Brightman, head of the company that okayed the contract: "Everyone in the Soviet Union is desperate for hard currency...
...foundering tanker spews oil off the Texas coast while Congress dithers over a bill to create rapid-response cleanup teams. Even the President admits the need for a budget-and-tax compromise, but a heralded bipartisan summit has so far failed to produce even an agreement on how large the federal deficit really is. Flagrant political scandals -- most notably, craven sellouts by lawmakers to the savings and loan industry -- raise new calls for campaign reforms, but the effort is going nowhere. The decline of the nation's schools produces gusts of rhetoric but not one serious education reform...