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April 29, 2008 The media and business consensus following last week’s Security and Prosperity Partnership summit in New Orleans is that the trilateral meeting didn’t produce anything significant. While this is partly correct – no new initiatives were announced – the ones we’re stuck with are bad enough. And while we learned a few new things about the SPP’s progress since Montebello, very few of the details ended up in the news. Luiza Savage, writing in Maclean’s magazine this week, called the April 21-22 meeting of North American political and business leaders “The Amigos’ Siesta Summit.” Expectations among the corporate cabal calling the shots – the North American Competitiveness Council – were so low, she wrote, “that some of the business folks didn’t even bother attending this year.” Writing before the summit began, the Toronto Star explained the mood this way: “It is, after all, the Security and Prosperity Partnership summit. It’s past time Washington stopped impeding the prosperity aspect. Canada has invested more than $10 billion terror-proofing our side of the border. That ought to be reassurance enough.” This is the line of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, which issued a report in February calling on the Canadian and U.S. governments not to let security issues get in the way of an open border for trade. It was also the main preoccupation of the NACC’s 2008 report to leaders. You can read more about that report here. Following the summit, media reports focused on Harper, Bush and Calderon’s defence of NAFTA and on Harper’s toothless threat that any attempt to reopen the free trade agreement could result in changes to America’s sweet deal on Canadian energy. Thus the wrong impression that the SPP has somehow stalled. SPP leaders’ statement and key accomplishments On April 22, 2008, after a preamble about the purpose of the SPP, President Bush explained how he, Calderon and Harper had agreed with the five priority areas that SPP ministers (Stockwell Day, Jim Prentice, and their U.S. and Mexican counterparts) set earlier this year at a meeting in Los Cabos, Mexico. These SPP ministers were directed to continue work in the areas of:
“Our efforts in these areas have been informed by the insights of interested parties, in particular the North American Competitiveness Council (NACC), representatives from the business community who have helped us identify and develop solutions to the most pressing issues affecting North American competitiveness,” said Bush in the joint statement. The words “in particular” here should have read “exclusively,” as the NACC, and broader corporate sector, has been the only non-governmental group consulted on what goes into the SPP and what doesn’t. Not surprisingly, the trilateral agreement is geared toward reducing barriers to the free flow of money, goods and businesspeople – not people and good ideas on how the world could work differently. The People’s Summit and tri-national opposition to the SPP Across Canada, the United States and Mexico, increasing numbers of people are waking up to the reality that NAFTA has not been good to everyone. The Globe and Mail reported this week that, “The final 2006 census data will portray the richest five per cent of Canadians as dramatically accumulating more wealth, the incomes of most residents showing perhaps the greatest stagnancy in the developed world and the nation's poorest falling further and further behind.” The trend goes back 25 years, according to data that will be released by Statistics Canada this week. That’s about when Canada and the United States signed the first free-trade agreement which, along with NAFTA several years later, was supposed to create jobs, jobs, jobs and boost and everyone’s bottom line. In fact, free trade has clearly only really benefited Canada’s very wealthy elite – the same crowd who sit around the SPP table, writing public policy, as part of the NACC. The SPP is thus a venue for the business elite to lock in and expand their tight grip over North America’s wealth, which continues to skyrocket at the expense of third-world poverty abroad and income stagnation at home. That wealth is also gained at the expense of the environment (through increased greenhouse gas emissions) and public health (through dirty air, water and increased toxins). The failure of the NAFTA/SPP model was the main topic at a People’s Summit that took place April 21-22, 2008 in New Orleans, to coincide with the official SPP summit. Dozens of U.S., Mexican and Canadian civil society groups came to New Orleans to participate in the locally organized event, which made the links between NAFTA’s corporate profiteering and the devastation to communities on the ground. President Bush chose New Orleans to highlight the city’s redevelopment. What we saw at the People’s Summit was a city that continues to suffer gross neglect from its local, state and federal governments, and where the priorities of the wealthy few dominate the policy agenda while those of the African American majority most affected by Hurricane Katrina are ignored. New Orleans represents the SPP in action, including an army of private security guards (Blackwater) to enforce the income inequality. Changing the course of deep integration In Mexico, civil society continues to protest NAFTA, and its expansion through the SPP, on a monthly basis in gatherings that draw as many as 500,000 people. In the United States, 14 Members of Congress have sent a letter to President Bush saying that while they are in favour of better North American relations, they “object strenuously to a process that permits the executives of our respective countries to bypass constitutionally mandated review.” And in Canada, we now have proof, in the form of a pubic opinion poll commissioned by the Council of Canadians, that this country overwhelmingly opposes to the policy directions of the SPP and demands the agreement be fully debated in Parliament. The media and business groups may claim that the SPP and its agenda of continental economic and security integration is stalling. There is evidence that some work will go on hold until the November U.S. election puts a new face into the White House. And Harper is now working with big business on a new bilateral proposition that privileges the Canada-U.S. relationship. But the very fact that this venue still exists, where big business leaders draft policy in a public-private partnership geared toward corporate profits, is reason enough to ramp up our opposition to “deep integration” with the United States – in any form it might take. It is bad enough that governments would draft policies on the sole behalf of corporations, like Canada did when it signed the FTA and NAFTA. It is unconscionable that corporations be allowed to draft policies for our governments across North America. Public opposition has obviously weakened the SPP. Now it’s time to put it out of its misery completely.
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Nothing new from the Disaster Summit but dangerous SPP initiatives live on
