declared their support for the 1987 free trade agreement with the United States, which the party had famously promised to tear up if they won the 1988 election, and instead Mulroney was now denounced for not going far enough in opening up the economy by signing more free trade agreements with other nations. Chrétien revealed himself to be a staunch "hard federalist" favouring a strong federal government at the expense of the provinces, much along the same lines as his predecessor Trudeau. However unlike Trudeau, Chrétien supported the Charlottetown Accord of August 1992, which proposed devolving federal powers to the provinces and once again recognized Quebec as a "distinct society". Chrétien endorsed the Charlottetown accord on the rather negative grounds that the constitutional debate of the late 1980s-early 1990s were destroying Canada, saying it "was bleeding the nation to death" and that Charlottetown was the best way of ending that debate in order to move political debate back to the economic recession, which had begun in 1990. At a Liberal caucus meeting on September 8, 1992, Chrétien declared that "if we had been the government we would not have made this deal", and that only reason to support Charlottetown was that to reject it would increase support for Quebec separatism. When Progressive Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney began to lose ground in the polls, Chrétien was the major beneficiary. In preparation for the 1993 election, Chrétien won the right to have the final say over riding nominations and to veto any candidate that displeased him. Chrétien's use of this power caused some protests within the Liberal Party with John Nunziata publicly complaining that "The backroom guys have taken control of the party. I guess they think they can muzzle us all". Chrétien was so confident that he was going to win the 1993 election that he formed his transition team in October 1992 to prepare for the hand-over of power 13 months before it actually happened. The 1993 election Mulroney announced his retirement in February, and was succeeded by Minister of National Defence Kim Campbell in June. Campbell pulled the PCs to within a few percentage points of the Liberals by the time the writs were dropped in September. On September 19, Chrétien released the Liberal platform. The 112-p. document, Creating Opportunity, quickly became known as the Red Book because of its bright red cover. Paul Martin, the man who