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North American Forum 2008 agenda released

June 19, 2008
Posted by Stuart Trew

Teresa Healy, a researcher with the Canadian Labour Congress, has acquired the agenda for the 2008 North American Forum (NAF), which took place in Washington, D.C. this week, bringing together 75 personally invited policymakers and business leaders to discuss North American integration behind closed doors.

According to a mission statement, “The NAF identifies actions that governments and private actors can take to help build societal resilience.” NAF members “are selected based on their commitment to the NAF mission and goals and their ability to effect positive change in their sphere of influence.”

In other words, to get invited you must share the continentalist leanings of the organizers – all former politicians with strong connections.

NAF meetings are off-the-record and yet government and other public officials are encouraged to take what is discussed at the private gathering and make it public policy, leaving us completely in the dark as to which policy decisions, often labelled “made in Canada” by the government, are actually the product of secret trilateral talks.

The 2008 NAF included sessions on:

1. Energy Resources and Infrastructure—Resources, Infrastructure, Efficiency. Panelists included: James Gray of Brookfield Asset Management, Inc, a Canadian North American Competitiveness Council member company with interests in energy infrastructure;  Carlos Morales Gil, managing director for exploration and production with the Mexican state energy company PEMEX; and General James L. Jones with the U.S. Marine Corps.
2. Climate Change—Identifying Common Strategies. This session was moderated by frequent NAF attendee John Manley, and if a speech from U.S. Energy Secretary Bodman is any indication of the joint North American strategy on climate change we are looking at a bleak future indeed.
3. North American Security—Threats to the Homeland. This session, which apparently treats North America as one “homeland,” was addressed by former CSIS director Reid Morgan.
4. Enhancing Economic Integration and Competitiveness. Canadian Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Wilson launched this session with a keynote address, which is still not available on the Canadian Embassy website. Wilson was introduced by Canadian Council of Chief Executives President Tom d’Aquino, who then sat as a panelist in the subsequent session.

The North American Forum is, in one sense, only one of many venues pushing for deeper continental integration, including the official integration talks through the Security and Prosperity Partnership. But in another more fundamental way these venues bias Canadian policymakers toward an economic and security agenda that has not been debated and that is not recognized by the public in Canada, Mexico or the United States as wise or desirable.

Our government decisionmakers and civil servants are bombarded with the rhetoric of economic integration and globalization as the only path for Canada’s future when all around the world people are waking up to their obvious flaws, whether it’s the impact of trade policies on the environment and jobs, or the hugely negative impact of SPP security policies on human rights.