Background on the SPP and the New Orleans meeting of the Three Amigos

This is from straight goods. This is the sort of article that should appear in the mainstream press. The New Orleans meeting has not produced much in the way of significant articles. Most mainstream journalists cannot be bothered digging below the surface to find out what is really important. They are content to publish a photo of the three Amigos or snippets of information about the general import of discussions. The relationship of the whole meeting to corporate agendas and the fact that the three meet only with corporate executives for the most part is glossed over.

Round four of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) talks

The SPP is the umbrella under which hundreds of trilateral initiatives have been assembled.

Dateline: Monday, April 21, 2008

by Bruce Campbell

As the NAFTA leaders and their big business counterparts gather in New Orleans a few days from now for the fourth North American Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) summit, it is worth reflecting on its role in North American integration.

The SPP was conceived by business and political elites as a vehicle for expanding and deepening the North American integration process entrenched under the NAFTA model. While its long-term (unstated) goal of a unified business friendly continental market may be ambitious, its strategy for getting there is slow and covert — small incremental steps out of the public eye and away from parliamentary scrutiny.

The SPP takes privatization of public policy-making to a new level.



The SPP is the umbrella under which hundreds of trilateral initiatives (both new and preexisting) have been assembled. Legions of bureaucrats work diligently on trilateral accords, understandings, protocols, etc. But they operate under centralized political control.

NAFTA leaders and key Ministers meet regularly with business representatives under the guise of the North American Competitiveness Council (NACC). Business conveys its demands, the politicians respond, consensus is reached, and civil servants implement. This takes the privatization of public policy-making to a new level.

Under the SPP process information is scarce. There is no public input or access to decisions made behind closed doors. Without our knowledge, the cumulative effect of many small steps may indeed be hugely significant for Canadians' health and safety, environment and civil liberties.

For instance, the US national energy security strategy calls for grabbing as much Canadian oil as it can get its hands on. The Stelmach government, with the Harper government's blessing, has enthusiastically ramped up tar sands production to accommodate US demand.

The SPP role is to help reduce regulatory barriers that stand in the way of getting the product to US markets quickly. Bilateral pipeline agreements have been signed; understandings have been reached on regulatory approvals, environmental assessments, etc.

Little is known about these accords. However, this much we do know: the National Energy Board recently approved the construction of two massive pipelines to carry raw bitumen from the tar sands to the US. Together their capacity exceeds the total volume of Alberta's 2006 oil exports. And once the oil flows, the US will, under the terms of NAFTA, have secured a proprietary claim.

This raises important policy questions: Why is Canada accelerating the export of this most polluting of fuels (to say nothing of other forms of environmental havoc) that is single-handedly preventing Canada from meeting its international commitments to reduce greenhouse gases?

Why in the name of Canadian energy security are no pipelines being built to eastern Canada, which is heavily dependent on imported oil, much from unreliable sources? And why are we exporting the raw resource and not doing the value-added work here in Canada?

Another example: At the last SPP summit in Montebello, the three countries signed an agreement on the regulation of chemicals. The Canadian chemicals regulation regime was, till then, positioned somewhere between the more stringent safety-first regime of the European Union's REACH program, and the business-friendly (so-called risk-based) American approach.

The Montebello accord shifts the ground, placing Canada firmly in the American camp. What's more, the US chemicals industry is using this accord in its global lobbying campaign to dilute and diminish the global impact of the European approach.

NAFTA — 15 years after its signing (20 years in the case of the Canada-US FTA) — remains controversial among citizens of all three countries. The fact is NAFTA did not fulfill its promise of shared prosperity.

Inequality has grown dramatically. Average incomes have stagnated or fallen for most families over the last 20 years; and job insecurity is widespread. Wealth and profits may be at record levels, but most people have not seen the benefits of economic integration.

Change is in the air. US presidential candidates are threatening to tear up NAFTA unless fundamental changes are made.

If NAFTA is reopened, as it may well be, the SPP will probably go into temporary hibernation. This would provide an opportunity to fundamentally rethink the SPP process and goals as well, and to bring it into line with democratic practice and the public good.

Bruce Campbell is Executive Director (since 1994) of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. He has spoken and written widely on public policy issues, and is a frequent media commentator. For many years he coordinated Centre's Alternative Federal Budget project. His most recent books are: Medicare: Facts, Myths, Problems & Promise, (with Greg Marchildon) James Lorimer & Company, 2007 and Living with Uncle: Canada-US Relations in an Age of Empire (with Ed Finn), James Lorimer & Company, 2006.

The Integration of the US and Canadian military

Given the recent news about Canadian military personnel serving in the Iraq war, this old article from August 2007 is relevant. The present meeting re the SPP in New Orleans also makes it relevant since military harmonisation will no doubt be a topic there although this never seems to be mentioned in the press. This is from the Harper Index.

SPP is built around secrecy and US military command according to law expert.
Michael Byers says SPP is part of a larger process that threatens Canadian sovereignty and autonomy.";


OTTAWA, August 20, 2007
........................................................
I was asked to speak about one aspect of the Security and Prosperity Partnership, namely security, or more specifically, the military. In the immediate aftermath of September 2001, plans were devised within the American and Canadian governments to put the entire Canadian Forces under the umbrella of the US Northern Command. To put all our soldiers, sailors and pilots and all their equipment under the operational control of the United States, in a much- expanded version of the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD). Fortunately some sunshine was let in upon that thinking before it could be taken too far. Some serious credit needs to be given here to a former Canadian foreign minister Lloyd Axworthy, who took advantage of being out of Cabinet to let the rest of us know what his former colleagues were up to.
So those who wanted to pursue the efforts of further integration of the Canadian and US military decided to take their efforts underground in arrangements that bear striking similarity to the SPP. And the SPP is part of a larger process. The Bi-National Planning Group was the military sister or brother of the SPP. Essentially it was a transborder committee of unelected bureaucrats, military officers and consultants who were given task of studying and then reporting on the options for improving the efficacy of the North American defensive system. The goal was simply to allow us to respond faster and better to the various kinds of threats that might arise.
The military officers worked away quietly in Colorado Springs, Colorado, headquarters of NORAD, as well as the US space command... Canadian military leaders quite liked playing with the big boys and using the best military equipment in the world...
The proponents of closer military integration could not believe their luck when Stephen Harper was elected. And very shortly after Mr. Harper came to power, they released their final report... which sets out four different options for the closer integration of the Canadian and US military. Most of the report is concerned with public relations, noting that Canadians are particularly attached to sovereignty.
Imagine how you might actually explain that closer military cooperation enhances sovereignty because giving up sovereignty is an exercise in sovereignty! You actually affirm your sovereignty by giving some of it away..
The report was very very clear that its preferred option was full integration, the option that had been floated internally in 2002, the assignment of Canadian Forces to what looked like an expanded NORAD, to an umbrella command where operational control would ultimately rest with the US military.
Some steps have been taken in that direction, including, last year, the NORAD agreement to expand the sharing of maritime surveillance including within the Northwest Passage. It wasn't much noticed at the time. Only one party opposed it in Parliament, the New Democratic Party of Canada.
When the report actually came out and was put up on the website of the Bi-National Planning Group, some smart people, including possibly the Prime Minister of Canada, decided that you were not yet ready for this. That somehow it wasn't the time to make the public case for the full integration of Canadian and US forces because Mr. Harper didn't get that majority he so desperately desired. And so it was shuffled away once again, it disappeared off the website, and the Bi-National Planning Group was shut down, and who knows what they're talking about in Montebello.
But something did happen, and I'm talking about Afghanistan.... We are seeing the implementation in theatre of precisely the kind of planning that was going into the Bi-National Planning Group. We are seeing the Canadian Forces being given more and more equipment. We're even buying new tanks. We're seeing the integration of attitudes and rules of engagement with respect to issues like the treatment of detainees. Why did we not adopt the Western European approach to detainee transfer rights, following models that were provided to us by the British, the Dutch and the Danish? Because Washington wanted to do it another way. And why should we volunteer for the most dangerous mission in Afghanistan, a forward-leaning, war- fighting search and kill mission supported by US airstrikes and working in tandem with a US-led and -commanded mission that is not part of the NATO command?
Why have 67 Canadian soldiers died in Afghanistan? Why did Private Simon Longtin die today? The simple explanation, and it's only a partial explanation, is that there are people who want to transform the Canadian Forces into a miniature version of the US Marine Corps and want Canada to only choose missions that involve fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with the United States; that want us to acquire equipment that integrates seamlessly with the US military, including in the relatively near future new F35 fighters. The same people who will tell you that peace-keeping is dead, that we really don't need new search-and-rescue aircraft in the second largest country on Earth, and who will tell you that those who stand up for the rights of detainees are expressing disrespect and a lack of support for the brave young Canadian men and women who serve this country in whatever mission they're given because they love this country just as much as you and I.
The integration of the Canadian and US military is not officially part of the SPP, but the SPP and the integration of the Canadian and US military are part of a larger project, and we need to address that larger project, and understand that what we're up against here does not involve the existence of an independent Canada. But as we saw with the Bi-National Planning Group, a little bit of sunshine can chase these plans away. When I look at this room I see a whole lot of sunshine

NAFTA the hot tune for amigos' last dance.

I await with bated breath the decision of the U.S. not to buy oil from the oilsands because it is dirty oil produced by methods that pollute the environment.
Sustainable energy development probably means ensuring that Canada and Mexico continue to produce enough energy for U.S. needs! It would be really quite a great idea should the next U.S. president re-open NAFTA.


This is from the Star.

NAFTA the hot tune for amigos' last dance
TheStar.com - Canada - NAFTA the hot tune for amigos' last dance


Susan Delacourt
Ottawa Bureau

OTTAWA–Prime Minister Stephen Harper has made it clear that Canada should not be playing an active part in the U.S. presidential race.

But Harper, President George W. Bush and Mexican President Felipe Calderon are expected to use their meetings in New Orleans tomorrow and Tuesday to speak out in favour of the North American Free Trade Agreement –which has become a political football in this year's presidential contest.

"It's an institution, a creation well worth preserving," a Canadian official told reporters at a background briefing in advance of the New Orleans meeting.

A U.S. official, speaking in Washington on Friday, was more blunt.

"We are aware that some of the statements that have been made here (in the U.S.) have made actually bigger headlines in Canada and Mexico than they have here. And we expect the leaders to talk about it. We think NAFTA works. We think the record of its past 14 years shows that it works," said Dan Fisk, a director with the National Security Council.

"We want to find ways to, frankly, convince the American people from our perspective, first and foremost, that this is an arrangement that's worked for us and it's also worked for our neighbours. It's been a win-win situation," said Fisk, who was also briefing U.S. reporters in advance of this week's summit.

NAFTA burst into the U.S. presidential race in a large way more than a month ago, during the Ohio primaries, when both Democratic contenders – Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama – mused openly about reopening the trade deal.

That blossomed into a controversy here in Canada when the Prime Minister's chief of staff, Ian Brodie, told some reporters that Canadian officials had been assured that all the Democratic talk of NAFTA was simple campaign rhetoric. A leak of briefing notes from consular officials on this same question – which whipped up a small news storm in the U.S. – prompted Harper to announce an investigation had been launched into the whole affair. And the Prime Minister reasserted that Canada should be staying out of U.S. presidential politics.

Officially, the upcoming meetings are known as the Security and Prosperity Partnership summit, named after the agreement launched in March, 2005, under the previous Liberal government in Canada.

Critics of the SPP – some of whom were due to stage protest marches in Ottawa over the weekend – charge that the agreement is really a thinly veiled attempt to advance Canada-U.S. integration.

"If the entire spectrum of SPP policies are implemented, I worry about what Canada will be like in 20 years," Seamus Wolfe, a vice-president of the student federation at the University of Ottawa, said in a release issued last week to announce the weekend protest.

With Bush's term in office winding down this year, this will be his last appearance at the meeting that's been nicknamed the "three amigos" summit.

Canadian officials said last week that there probably will be some note made of this fact in New Orleans – some way to thank Bush for his enthusiastic backing of greater North American co-operation.

As for details, though, of what's to be achieved this week, officials were not revealing any hints of progress expected.

When they last met, at Montebello, Que., in August, the three leaders agreed on five priority areas in which to pursue greater "collaboration" by Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. These include: food and product safety; sustainable energy and the environment; "smart and secure" borders; emergency management and preparedness; and "enhancing the global competitiveness of North America."

But more generally, officials were saying that this week's meetings were being kept open deliberately, in terms of agenda, so that the three leaders could be more freewheeling about the topics they want to discuss.

Canada, for instance, will want to use this opportunity to once again see where opportunities can be found to enhance access at the Canada-U.S. border – a continuing issue since the U.S. introduced stricter passport requirements at all its entry points.

As well, Canadian officials told reporters that this country will be pressing to know more about potential implications of a recent U.S. congressional move to limit purchases of energy from sources with high output of greenhouse gases. That measure could harm Canadian exports of energy to the U.S. from the Alberta tar sands and have serious consequences for the Canadian economy, the official said.

Harper has private, one-on-one meetings tomorrow with Bush and Calderon and the full, three-way summit doesn't really begin in earnest until Tuesday. In Canada-Mexico dealings, the issue of Canadian citizen Brenda Martin has been looming over this meeting. That's the woman who has been jailed in Guadalajara for two years – her court case only formally unfolding last week. It had been assumed and hoped that the judge in the case would issue a ruling before the summit. As it turns out, the judge said Friday he would issue his ruling at 2 p.m. Tuesday, about an hour or two after the summit ends.

Murray Dobbin: Canada up for grabs

Day's and Harper's remarks are rather reckless but it remains to be seen how much if any effect they will have. As Dobbin notes the Liberal introduced the SPP and it was no less secretive then than now. Interesting that according to Dobbin Dion sees the Afghan war as part of the SPP agenda.

Canada up for grabs
>by Murray Dobbin
August 30, 2007
Stephen Harper's behaviour around the NAFTA leaders' Security and Prosperity Partnership summit was politically reckless, and he will pay a price for it. The summit was really about the deep integration of Canada with the United States, a major concern to anyone concerned about Canada's sovereignty, our ability to manage our borders and regulate trade and corporate behaviour.
Harper's dismissal of the demonstrators outside the Montebello summit as “sad” and his condescending rejection of critics from every opposition party leaves the impression that Mr. Harper thinks he is a monarch, not a minority prime minister.

Even worse, Stockwell Day's outrageous fabrication after the Sûreté du Québec admitted sending agents among the demonstrators: “They were being encouraged to throw rocks.... That's the irony of this. Because they were not engaging in violence, it was noted that they were probably not protesters. I think that's a bit of an indictment against the violent protesters.”

There was no violence, no rock-throwing at the site of the incident—not even the police make this claim.

But if Day and Harper believe they can continue to portray the SPP as the jelly-bean initiative, they may be in for a nasty surprise. All the opposition parties have taken a critical stand on the SPP and deep integration in general.

The NDP has been leading the charge for months, and successfully flushed out the government on the issue of energy security by forcing SPP hearings in the International Trade Committee. New Westminster MP Peter Julian has been digging up dirt on the process for over a year, and has identified a massive deregulation effort involving some 300 public policy areas. Leader Jack Layton is making speeches across the country on the issue.

Orchard's bounty

On the Friday before the summit, the Liberals got in the game in a major way with a 14-page position paper—courtesy, I expect, of anti-free trader David Orchard. Orchard was the low-key kingmaker at the Liberal leadership convention, delivering the win to Stéphane Dion with his 100-plus delegates. The Liberal position paper, called “Strong and Free: The Liberal Blueprint for the North American Leaders Summit,” takes extreme liberties with the truth when it claims the Liberal conception of the SPP “was one all Canadians could embrace.”

In fact, Paul Martin's version of the SPP (he initiated it at the first summit in 2005) was every bit as insidious and secretive as Harper's. Nonetheless, Dion has now staked out a new position: demanding complete transparency in the process, identifying the Afghan war as part of the SPP agenda and reiterating the party's position that the mission end in 2009, calling for water exports to be taken off the table, and demanding the return of Canadian Omar Khadr from Guantanamo. The energy issue—the massive, Kyoto-killing tar sands expansion—however, was conspicuously absent.

The Green Party's Elizabeth May also has a lot riding on the deep integration issue, having stated several times that it will be the core of the party's next election platform. The Greens held a counter-summit in Ottawa, with their U.S. counterpart also taking a stand against the SPP. The party is focusing much of its attention on the North American Competitiveness Council—the body of 35 corporate CEOs (the U.S. gets 15, Canada and Mexico 10 each) that has been formally established as the only non-government body making recommendations to the three governments.

Even the Bloc has taken a critical stand, a reversal of the sovereigntist position on free trade and NAFTA.

How the opposition parties decide to play the SPP and its critical component parts—the environment, energy security, Afghanistan, the militarization of Canadian culture, water exports and the relentless corporatism of the process—in the next election remains to be seen.

The Bloc has already threatened to try to bring down the government over Afghanistan. The NDP is extremely well placed to take the issue on, but seems reluctant to make it the centrepiece of their electoral vision. The Green Party's intentions are good, but they have almost no resources to carry them out. And the Liberals always run from the left, so their “strong and free” document is likely to suffer the same fate as other such promises (like Paul Martin's Red Book), even if does end up in their platform.

Creating traction

Despite these positive signs, if the opposition parties believe deep integration has little traction, they will drop it as an issue. So it will be up to the social and environmental movements and organized labour to make deep integration and the SPP the central issue of the next election. That it should be the central issue seems obvious. There is no better time to reverse 20 years of Americanization of Canada. We will likely still have George Bush as U.S. president, a gift to Canadian nationalists. The U.S. itself is in rapid decline by most measures, and Canadians' alarm over global warming creates a perfect context for challenging the power of oil companies to determine Canadian public policy.

The Montebello summit, and the unprecedented exposé of police provocateurs, marked the end of the secrecy phase of deep integration. The parallel with the fight against the Free Trade Agreement of Brian Mulroney is striking. Following years of secrecy, Mulroney and his Bay Street cronies finally had to come out in the open and defend the substance of the deal—and they almost lost the 1988 election. But the NDP got it wrong that time and Mulroney walked away with the spoils. This time the stakes are even higher. Everyone will have to get it right or we really will lose the country.


Murray Dobbin writes from Vancouver. This column has appeared in The Tyee.

SPP built around secrecy and US military command.

Imagine after 9/11 there were plans to put the entire Canadian Forces under the umbrella of a US command. I had never heard of that before. There is lots of ammunition for the anti-integration forces in this article!
Personally I think that the military integration is simply ancillary to the main project which is making things easier and more profitable for North American capital. That is why the 30 executives of the NACC are the ones participating with the leaders. There are no military leaders, NGOs, labor, or anyone else apparently. For some reason the US commands 13 members of the NACCC so it may be that there are 33 executives at the meeting. I have never seen that figure though.


SPP is built around secrecy and US military command - law expert

Sovereignty rhetoric contradicted by turnover of controls on military and immigration

OTTAWA, August 20, 2007: The agreement's title is classic framing: "Security and Prosperity Partnership" (SPP) conjures up comfortable images. Michael Byers says the agreement under discussion this week by Canadian, US and Mexican leaders Harper, Bush and Calderon should more properly be framed as a secret agreement to hand sweeping military, immigration and border control of all three countries over to the US. On Sunday, Byers, the Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law at the University of British Columbia told a standing-room-only forum in Ottawa about the politics and persuasion connected with the agreement under discussion behind the barricades this week at Montebello, Quebec.

I want to begin by welcoming the civil servants who have been sent to keep track of what's going on here. Like you, we love our country; unlike the people who are gathering in Montebello this week, we have nothing to hide.

The Security and Prosperity Partnership did not begin as a phenomenon after September 11, 2001. It was part of a trend that predates that time. But the proponents of North American integration seized upon 9/11 as an opportunity to advance their cause. And some of those proponents in Canada were very overt about their aspirations in the weeks and months after the terrorist atrocities in New York City and Washington, DC.

David O'Brien, the CEO of Canadian Pacific and now Chairman of the Board of Royal Bank of Canada, argued Canada would have to adopt US-style immigration policies to keep the border open. He said that we have to make North Americans secure from the outside. 'We're going to lose increasingly our sovereignty but it's necessarily so.' Mr. O'Brien is an influential man. Within months, the Canadian government had signed the Safe Third Country agreement with the United States whereby Canadian refugee policy was essentially assimilated into the refugee policy of the United States. The rights of human beings to asylum when they're being persecuted for their religious or political opinions or ethnic identities is one of the most fundamental rights of all.

Then there was Nancy Hughes Anthony, the President of the Canadian Chambers of Commerce who said that we're not going to get anywhere with our American friends unless we can show we have good strong anti-terrorist legislation and we intend to enforce it. The result was the 2001 Anti- terrorism Act, which, of course was modelled on the [US] Patriot Act.

And then there was Patrick E. Daniels, the President of Enbridge, the big energy company based in Calgary, who complained that Canada pushed its sovereignty 'a little too far.' He said it would be realistic for Canada to either get onside with US foreign policy or 'accept some change in our relationship.'

I was asked to speak about one aspect of the Security and Prosperity Partnership, namely security, or more specifically, the military. In the immediate aftermath of September 2001, plans were devised within the American and Canadian governments to put the entire Canadian Forces under the umbrella of the US Northern Command. To put all our soldiers, sailors and pilots and all their equipment under the operational control of the United States, in a much- expanded version of the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD). Fortunately some sunshine was let in upon that thinking before it could be taken too far. Some serious credit needs to be given here to a former Canadian foreign minister Lloyd Axworthy, who took advantage of being out of Cabinet to let the rest of us know what his former colleagues were up to.

So those who wanted to pursue the efforts of further integration of the Canadian and US military decided to take their efforts underground in arrangements that bear striking similarity to the SPP. And the SPP is part of a larger process. The Bi-National Planning Group was the military sister or brother of the SPP. Essentially it was a transborder committee of unelected bureaucrats, military officers and consultants who were given task of studying and then reporting on the options for improving the efficacy of the North American defensive system. The goal was simply to allow us to respond faster and better to the various kinds of threats that might arise.

The military officers worked away quietly in Colorado Springs, Colorado, headquarters of NORAD, as well as the US space command.... Canadian military leaders quite liked playing with the big boys and using the best military equipment in the world...

The proponents of closer military integration could not believe their luck when Stephen Harper was elected. And very shortly after Mr. Harper came to power, they released their final report... which sets out four different options for the closer integration of the Canadian and US military. Most of the report is concerned with public relations, noting that Canadians are particularly attached to sovereignty.

Imagine how you might actually explain that closer military cooperation enhances sovereignty because giving up sovereignty is an exercise in sovereignty! You actually affirm your sovereignty by giving some of it away..

The report was very very clear that its preferred option was full integration, the option that had been floated internally in 2002, the assignment of Canadian Forces to what looked like an expanded NORAD, to an umbrella command where operational control would ultimately rest with the US military.

Some steps have been taken in that direction, including, last year, the NORAD agreement to expand the sharing of maritime surveillance including within the Northwest Passage. It wasn't much noticed at the time. Only one party opposed it in Parliament, the New Democratic Party of Canada.

When the report actually came out and was put up on the website of the Bi-National Planning Group, some smart people, including possibly the Prime Minister of Canada, decided that you were not yet ready for this. That somehow it wasn't the time to make the public case for the full integration of Canadian and US forces because Mr. Harper didn't get that majority he so desperately desired. And so it was shuffled away once again, it disappeared off the website, and the Bi-National Planning Group was shut down, and who knows what they're talking about in Montebello.

But something did happen, and I'm talking about Afghanistan.... We are seeing the implementation in theatre of precisely the kind of planning that was going into the Bi-National Planning Group. We are seeing the Canadian Forces being given more and more equipment. We're even buying new tanks. We're seeing the integration of attitudes and rules of engagement with respect to issues like the treatment of detainees. Why did we not adopt the Western European approach to detainee transfer rights, following models that were provided to us by the British, the Dutch and the Danish? Because Washington wanted to do it another way. And why should we volunteer for the most dangerous mission in Afghanistan, a forward-leaning, war- fighting search and kill mission supported by US airstrikes and working in tandem with a US-led and -commanded mission that is not part of the NATO command?

Why have 67 Canadian soldiers died in Afghanistan? Why did Private Simon Longtin die today? The simple explanation, and it's only a partial explanation, is that there are people who want to transform the Canadian Forces into a miniature version of the US Marine Corps and want Canada to only choose missions that involve fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with the United States; that want us to acquire equipment that integrates seamlessly with the US military, including in the relatively near future new F35 fighters. The same people who will tell you that peace-keeping is dead, that we really don't need new search-and-rescue aircraft in the second largest country on Earth, and who will tell you that those who stand up for the rights of detainees are expressing disrespect and a lack of support for the brave young Canadian men and women who serve this country in whatever mission they're given because they love this country just as much as you and I.

The integration of the Canadian and US military is not officially part of the SPP, but the SPP and the integration of the Canadian and US military are part of a larger project, and we need to address that larger project, and understand that what we're up against here does not involve the existence of an independent Canada. But as we saw with the Bi-National Planning Group, a little bit of sunshine can chase these plans away. When I look at this room I see a whole lot of sunshine

Continental Integration on the march

McQuaig is dead on. Not only is there no attempt to encourage discussion on the issues it seems that there is almost complete silence in the new media on the issue except for a few news releases by the Council of Canadians and some discussion of TILMA. There is plenty of security for the upcoming meeting on the SPP in Quebec but no opportunity for any public input or even demonstrations.


Continental integration on the march
>by Linda McQuaig
July 11, 2007
It's a great irony that, while the United States has probably never been less popular among Canadians than in the era of George W. Bush, plans to integrate Canada more deeply into the U.S. have been proceeding at a brisk clip.

The threat of Canada being absorbed into the U.S. has traditionally provoked strong reactions here, as the pitched electoral battles over the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in the 1980s and '90s attest.

But the issue seems to have largely disappeared in recent years, leaving the impression that the push for deeper integration has stopped or that Canadians no longer care about it. Neither is true.

Rather, what's happened is that those pushing for deeper Canada-U.S. integration — principally members of the corporate elite on both sides of the border — have become more sophisticated in their strategy. Rather than loudly trumpeting their agenda, they've made their push largely invisible.

Their latest vehicle is the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP). Since it was officially launched by the leaders of the U.S., Canada and Mexico in March 2005, it's operated largely under the radar, even though it deals with some of the most important issues a nation faces — national security and energy, as well as trade.

Given the centrality of these issues, one would have thought that any changes — especially changes that would make Canada more like the U.S. — should involve wide consultation with the Canadian people.

But exactly the opposite is happening. The public has been completely shut out of the SPP process. The key advisory body in the SPP is an all-business group called the North American Competitiveness Council, made up of 30 CEOs from the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

It's fine to have input from business, but why only business? Corporations have interests which are not necessarily the same as the broader public interest; indeed, these two sets of interests are often in conflict.

Take the small example of the harmonization of regulations involving pesticides. This harmonizing of standards — in the interest of removing “trade barriers” — has been underway for more than a decade under NAFTA, but it is now being fast-tracked under the SPP.

So, as the Ottawa Citizen reported in May, Canada is raising the limits on pesticide residue permitted on fruits and vegetables, to bring Canadian standards into line with weaker U.S. standards.

As a citizen and an eater of fruits and vegetables, this alarms me. Canada's standards are already weak enough. For example, both Canada and the U.S. permit the pesticide permethrin to be used at levels 400 times higher than the European Union permits; we allow methoxychlor at levels 1,400 times above the European limit, according to a study by Canadian environmental lawyer David Boyd.

Shouldn't our government be tightening our standards, not quietly watering them down further to make things easier for those in the business of selling these — and other — products?

Regulatory harmonization is just one small area that the SPP is working on. I'll deal with the more contentious issues — security and energy — in a later column, all in the interest of setting the stage for next month, when Bush arrives in Montebello, Que., for what he, Stephen Harper and Mexican president Felipe Calderon are no doubt hoping will be an opportunity to quietly discuss the SPP and weigh the advice of their business council.

No public consultations have been planned for Montebello. Indeed, security measures will ensure the leaders hear as little as possible from the people.

Linda McQuaig's column is originally published by The Toronto Star.

The plan to disappear Canada

This is a good summary of some of the things that are happening to integrate Canada and the US )and Mexico. It is ironic that is often the right that is opposing the move in the US while it is the left here. Dobbin talks about deregulation but much of this is less deregulation than harmonisation of regulations to the detriment of national control and often resulting in weaker regulations as the pesiticide residues case shows. This is from Rabble.


The plan to disappear Canada
>by Murray Dobbin
June 11, 2007
If the machinations going on in this country regarding so-called “deep integration” were instead a communist conspiracy to take over the country (you will, of course, have to try hard to imagine this) the news media would be blaring the story.

Pundits would pontificate, editorialists would erupt, security forces would be unleashed.

Instead, a virtual conspiracy to make the country disappear through assimilation into the U.S. gets barely a mention.

But news of the scheme — formally called the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) — is finally breaking out of the secret chambers of the ruling elite and the federal government. This is both good news and bad. It's good that ordinary citizens are finally getting a glimpse of the betrayal of their country. The news is bad because it reflects just how much of this scheme is already being implemented.

Given the meetings of CEOs and politicians to advance the scheme politically, as well as all that must go into its actual implementation, there is simply too much activity to keep secret.

Ten dots to connect

Here are 10 developments in the plan to disappear Canada.

1) Pesticides 'harmonized.' The most thoroughly reported story (though even this did not go much beyond the CanWest chain) was the revelation that Canada was about to “harmonize” its regulations, setting limits for pesticide residue on fruits and vegetables. In 40 per cent of the cases, the U.S. allows for higher levels. Richard Aucoin, chief registrar of the Pest Management Regulatory Agency, which sets Canada's pesticide levels, said that Canada's higher levels were a “trade irritant.”

The downgrading of health protection had been a NAFTA initiative, but is being “fast-tracked” as part of the Security and Prosperity Partnership. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Some 300 regulatory regimes are currently going through the same process.

2) Tory tirade. The next story that broke through the wall of media silence reported on the paranoid reaction of the Harper Conservatives to any criticism of the SPP. The occasion was hearings of the Commons International Trade Committee into the SPP, forced by the NDP.

Gordon Laxer, head of Alberta's Parkland Institute, was testifying on the energy implications of the SPP, warning that eastern Canada could end up “freezing in the dark.” He had barely started when the chair of the committee, Conservative MP Leon Benoit, demanded that Laxer halt his “irrelevant” testimony. The Committee members overruled Benoit — who promptly (and illegally) adjourned the meeting and stomped out. The NDP and Liberal members nonetheless continued without him.

3) Council of corporate power. The SPP initiative began in earnest back in 2002 with the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (formerly the BCNI), the most powerful corporate body in the country. It continues its leadership role, but does not promote the scheme just in its own name. It instead has helped create several supportive bodies that now help drive the agenda. Included in these are the North American Competitive Council (NACC), which includes CEOs of the largest North American corporations, and which institutionalizes the exclusively corporate nature of the agreement. The NACC is the only advisory group to the three NAFTA/SPP governments.

4) Secretive summit. The NACC at least is public. But much of what happens in building the elite consensus for deep integration is done in absolute secrecy or very privately, away from the prying eyes of the media. The most secretive of these was held last year from Sept. 12 to 14, in Banff Springs. As The Tyee reported, the gathering was sponsored by something called the North American Forum* and it was attended by some of the most powerful members of the North American ruling elite.

Attendees, according to a leaked list that could not be confirmed, included Donald Rumsfeld, George Schultz (former U.S. Secretary of State), General Rick Hillier, Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor and Minister of Public Safety Stockwell Day. The media was not informed of the meeting and it was first revealed by the weekly Banff Crag & Canyon.

Stockwell Day refused to even confirm he was there, but said that even if he was, it was a “private” meeting that he would not comment on. There is no better indication that these meetings, and the SPP itself, constitute a parallel governing structure — unaccountable to any democratic institution or the public.

5) 'No fly' coordination. Canada will have its own “no-fly” list just like our U.S. “partner.”

As the Council of Canadians pointed out: “The no-fly list is very much a Security and Prosperity Partnership initiative. 'The SPP Report to Leaders, August 2006' outlines 105 SPP initiatives. Initiative #93 states, 'Develop, test, evaluate and implement a plan to establish comparable aviation passenger screening, and the screening of baggage and air cargo (for North America).'”

Canada's privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart has raised a number of concerns about the plan including the fact that the list will be shared with the U.S., that “false positives” are a virtual certainty, and that there is no evidence put forward by the government that the list will improve airline security.

6) Bye, bye Canadian dollar? David Dodge, the head of the Bank of Canada, told a Chicago audience that a single currency for North America “is possible.” That would see a big chunk of Canadian sovereignty and the ability to guide the economy through monetary policy go out the window. It's not the first time Dodge has mused about abandoning the Canadian dollar — or deep integration.

7) Water and oil giveaways. The deep integrationists clearly see Canadian water as a North American resource, not a Canadian resource. At yet another very private meeting, held in Calgary on April 27th under the auspices of yet another forum, it was made clear that water is on the table for negotiation.

Discussion of bulk “water transfers” and diversions took place at a Calgary meeting of the North American Future 2025 Project (partly funded by the U.S. government). The meeting based its deliberations on the false notion that Canada has 20 per cent of the world's fresh water. Actual available supply amounts to only around six per cent — about the same as has the U.S.

The water (and environment) meeting was preceded by another on April 26th talking about “North American” energy. The beneficiary of these discussions is pretty clear when you realize Canada has no national energy policy. We are the only energy exporting country in the world without a one.

Gordon Laxer told the Parliamentary committee: “The National Energy Board wrote me on April 12: 'Unfortunately, the NEB has not undertaken any studies on security of supply.'” He was also told by the NEB that Canada does not maintain a 90 day energy reserve as other developed nations do. As Laxer points out, “Canada may be a net exporter, but it still imports 40 per cent of its oil — 850,000 barrels per day — to meet 90 per cent of Atlantic Canada's and Quebec's needs, and 40 per cent of Ontario's.”

Canada exports 63 per cent of its oil production and 56 per cent of its natural gas, percentages that can never decrease under NAFTA.

8) NAFTA Superhighway. State governments in the U.S. are becoming increasingly alarmed at the prospects of deep integration. Earlier this year, Idaho became the first state to pass a legislative resolution directing the U.S. Congress to drop out of the SPP, which is referred to as the North American Union amongst U.S. opponents. Thirteen states in addition to Idaho are calling on Congress to abandon the SPP: Georgia, Arizona, Missouri, Illinois, Oregon, Montana, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Utah, South Dakota, Tennessee, Washington and Virginia.

Part of the opposition is focused on plans for a so-called NAFTA Superhighway: actually a corridor several hundred metres wide including rail lines, freeways and pipelines from Mexico to the Canadian border. There is a growing grassroots movement against the SPP in the U.S., but led by the right over the issue of compromising American sovereignty.

9) Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA). While U.S. states, concerned about state rights under an unaccountable “North American Union, ” are organizing against the scheme, Canadian provinces are either blithely unaware or knowingly complicit in the deal. More Canadians may be aware of TILMA — the investors' rights agreement between B.C. and Alberta — than they are about the SPP, but in reality they are one and the same.

TILMA is major piece of the deep integration, deregulation imperative and fits hand in glove with the SPP. There is a similar, though more informal, process evolving in the Atlantic provinces, called “Atlantica.” And B.C. is now pushing the so-called Gateway Initiative, a kind of regional superhighway project that will see huge and environmentally disastrous expansion of ports, highways and pipelines to further supply the U.S.'s insatiable demand for resources and cheap Asian goods.

10) The next SPP summit. The third leaders summit on the SPP will take place this August 21-22nd in Montebello, Quebec, not far from Ottawa. By the time it does many more Canadians will be aware of it.

Part of the reason that news of the SPP/deep integration issue is finally seeing the light of day is that opposition is growing and groups fighting the SPP are having an impact. The Council of Canadians, the CLC and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives held an SPP teach-in in Ottawa last month and many civil society groups are now taking deep integration to their members. Demonstrations are planned for the summit. The NDP continues to press the government on SPP secrecy and the Green Party's Elizabeth May has said deep integration will be a focus of the party's election platform.

It is hard to think of any other issue in modern Canadian history, especially one that will literally determine whether the country survives or not, that has taken so long to get public attention. I first wrote about it September, 2002.

By the time the SPP summit has come and gone and the fall political season begins, deep integration, the most treacherous plan for the country yet devised by Bay Street, will be increasingly exposed.

And by the next election, we could see a repeat of the great “free trade” election of 1988. This time we have to win.

Murray Dobbin writes from Vancouver. This column has appeared in The Tyee.