Toronto Star
OTTAWA -- When Maude Barlow took on the job of unpaid chairperson of the Council of Canadians in 1988, the tiny nationalist group had, according to this story, a staff of only two and a narrow focus: to fight free trade.
And many saw Barlow as a loser.
In 1988, she had lost a hard-fought battle for the Liberal nomination in Ottawa Centre to Mac Harb, who won the riding in the federal election later that year.
Today, Barlow presides over a flourishing, self-sufficient organization with a budget of $3.5 million, a staff of 30 at its Ottawa headquarters, and a paid membership of 100,000 - more than either the Reform party (67,000) or the New Democratic Party (89,000). And the group has moved well beyond free trade, fighting successful domestic campaigns against, among others, addition of bovine growth hormone to milk and genetically engineered food -- persuading McCain's not to use GE potatoes for its french fries.:
