The unemployment rate is lower now that it was in the late 1970s and 1980s before free trade. (https://tradingeconomics.com/canada/unemployment-rate)
The unemployment rate in 1982 was 13%, higher by far than after the Great Recession of 2008 and higher even that in the 1992 recession. Pierre Trudeau created a commission on the Canadian economy headed by his former finance minister, Donald MacDonald, and the report it delivered (a few years later to Mulroney) recommended free trade. As for the 63 cent dollar, you ignore the combined effect of lower commodity prices, massive inherited government debt burdens , even after deficits were eliminated in the late '90s, and the money that had to be used paying for the debt rather than productively boosting the Canadian economy----the Italian lira also dropped like a lead balloon in the 1990s----and, finally, the political instability produced by the BQ, the PQ, and the constant threat of Quebec separation.