INTEGRATE THIS!
Challenging the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America
A report by the Council of Canadians
PART II: WHAT WE KNOW
In March 2005, as a result of intense lobbying from North America’s richest corporations,
the leaders of Canada, Mexico and the United States met in Waco, Texas to shake hands
on the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP). The SPP was a
pledge to speed up the corporate agenda for continental economic integration by linking
it to U.S. government demands for a common North American security perimeter. In a
post-9/11 world where, for the Bush administration, “security trumps trade,” the Canadian
and Mexican governments have agreed to fully integrate their security apparatuses with
the U.S. in return for vague assurances of market access for their largest corporations.
The first report of the Security and Prosperity Partnership in 2005 described how
decisions on Canada-U.S. integration would be made: “meetings” for business, “consultations” for stakeholders and “briefings” for Parliament. A public-private dialogue
on the SPP from January 2006 talked about “marrying policy issues with business
priorities,” and of building “a genuine constituency for North American integration.” A few
months later, the Canadian, American and Mexican governments handed the private
sector even more power by creating the North American Competitiveness Council
(NACC).
The usual suspects
The NACC is a group made up of 30 CEOs from Canada, the U.S. and Mexico that has
been asked to set the agenda for deep integration. “The priorities you identify will set the
stage for our work going forward in the SPP,” said U.S. Secretary of Commerce Carlos
Gutierrez at the launch of the NACC in May 2006. In a closed-door meeting since then,
NACC members agreed to “hold governments’ feet to the fire” in a number of “lagging
priority areas.”
All 10 Canadian appointees to the NACC are members of the Canadian Council of
Chief Executives (CCCE), a powerful corporate lobby group and Canada’s most vocal
proponent of a North American union. Four of the U.S. member corporations – Chevron,
Ford, Lockheed Martin and Wal-Mart – were on Global Exchange’s 2005 list of worst
corporations. Their involvement begs the question of whose security and prosperity the
NACC is looking out for.
Secret discussions
Since March 2005, without public input and little public awareness, all three
North American governments have moved quickly toward establishing a
continental resource pact, a North American security perimeter, and common
agricultural and other health, safety and environmental policies. Working
groups comprised of government officials and corporate leaders are quietly
putting this “partnership” into action, and to date only industry “stakeholders”
have been consulted. The next meeting of SPP leaders is planned to be held
somewhere in Canada this August.
Breaking the silence
That’s why the Council of Canadians, the Canadian Labour Congress and the Canadian
Centre for Policy Alternatives joined with dozens of other organizations to put on the
Integrate This! teach-in. We wanted to bring together policy experts and academics to
take the issue to the public, and to help activists connect the dots between their areas of
interest – be it the environment, immigrant rights or economic justice – and the looming
threat of the SPP.
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