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June 4, 2008 Quebec Premier Jean Charest will give the closing address to the 2008 NASCO conference starting today in Guanajuato, central Mexico, and is expected to describe his vision for continental economic integration, according to La Presse canadienne today. Manitoba Premier Gary Doer will give an opening address to the conference, giving the annual meeting to discuss North American trade corridors a distinctly Canadian feel. According to the Manitoba government: “The NASCO meeting is being held … in conjunction with the 2008 Leaders’ Summit on North American Relations. [Mexican President Felipe] Calderón, Doer, Oliva Ramirez and NASCO president George Blackwood Jr. will bring opening remarks to the conference. NASCO promotes trade and transportation along the mid-continent corridor that features Manitoba as the northern leg of the route. Guanajuato is located in mid-Mexico, similar to Manitoba’s location within Canada.” The 2006 “Leader’s Summit” in Gimli, Manitoba was billed as a meeting to build on “the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) being implemented by the federal governments of the three countries and the first Hemispheria conference of provincial, state and local governments, their business communities, and their civil societies, held in May 2005 in San Pedro Garza Garcia, Nuevo Leon, Mexico.” Doer has been a regular participant in NASCO meetings with clear vested interest in seeing an upgraded highway route connected Manitoba with ports on the Mexican west coast. Charest’s presence this year is interesting for a few reasons. Mulroney’s hangover: Charest and deep integration In early 2005, Charest joined other promient integrationists in the pages of the International Journal, writing a piece called “Canada and the U.S.: Continuity and Change.” In that article, Charest explained that he “was part of a federal government that adopted the bilateral free trade agreement with the United States,” urging the ruling Liberal government to “strengthen the foundation of our economic relationship with the United States,” even flirting with ideas like a customs union, universal standards for the environment, joint tribunals for litigation, and complete freedom of movement of goods and people throughout the continent. He talked about North America’s many integrated regions, such as the Quebec-New York and Quebec-New England corridors, calling it the phenomenon the “globalization of regions,” which goes hand in hand with “regional diplomacy.” And he discussed the importance of Quebec’s cooperation with the U.S. government’s endless security demands for the border. Furthermore, Charest said in his essay that “Canada and the United States would do well to develop a continental energy market that meets security, reliability, and diversification needs.” Notably, the Premier recently announced a new series of wind projects, and is trying to establish liquified natural gas plants across the province, all to supply U.S. energy needs – not the needs of Quebec. NASCO and the “NAFTA superhighway” NASCO stands for North America’s Super Corridor Coalition, Inc., “a nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing economic development activity while supporting multi-modal infrastructure improvements, technology/security innovations and environmental initiatives along the NASCO Corridor, and to stimulate the dialogue between the public and private sectors about critical, corridor-wide trade and transportation challenges,” according to the official website. Many groups in the United States, most espousing xenophobic critiques of deep integration focused on keeping Mexicans out of America, say that NASCO is building a “NAFTA superhighway” designed to blur North America’s borders until we are one big continental union. In fact, NASCO is one public-private coalition focused on upgrading (widening) and securitizing several already existing north-south trade routes. That said, President Bush and Prime Minister Harper have been misleading the public by claiming that these highways have nothing to do with the SPP. A North American transportation plan has been part of the trilateral agenda since the beginning. And the confluence of this particular NASCO meeting with the SPP spinoff 2008 “Leader’s Summit” of Canadian Premiers and U.S. governors further cements the case that so-called supercorridors, wherever they are being built (i.e., the Asia-Pacific Corridor, to which the Harper government has committed $1 billion, and the newer Atlantic Corridor), are intimately tied to deep integration. Transportation corridors and the SPP Initiatives and milestones under the SPP’s prosperity agenda include:
NASCO was founded in 1996, before the SPP but closely related to NAFTA, and members include cities, counties, states, provinces and private sector representatives along the corridor in Canada, the United States and Mexico, “dedicated to maximizing the efficiency and security of their existing trade and transportation infrastructure.” Currently, the organization is “positioning our corridor to take advantage of the opportunities NAFTA and the SPP will create,” including “increased security at borders balanced with the efficient LEGAL movement of people and goods.” It looks to NAFTA and the SPP as venues for increasing the “trade competitiveness of North America, United States and particularly our corridor in the global marketplace.” The board of directors includes Canadian members Andrew T. Horosko, deputy minister of transportation for Manitoba Transportation and Government Services, Ginette Chenard, a delegate in Atlanta, GA for the Government of Quebec, and Jean Couture, assistant deputy minister for the Quebec Ministry of Transportation. The Quebec-Ontario Trade Corridor In July 2007, Quebec and Ontario signed a memorandum of understanding on the development of an Ontario-Quebec Continental Gateway and Trade Corridor. “The Continental Gateway includes strategic ports, airports, intermodal facilities and border crossings as well as essential road, rail and marine infrastructure that ensures this transportation system’s connection to, and seamless integration with, Canada’s other gateways: Asia-Pacific and Atlantic,” claims an inter-provincial website set up for the corridor project. According to a backgrounder released after the joint Ontario-Quebec cabinet meeting in Quebec City this week: “The gateway links Canada’s economic heartland with the United States and provides valuable connections to growing markets in Europe and Asia. The region is vitally important in maintaining Canada’s position as the dominant trading partner of the United States.” So now Charest has a double reason for addressing the NASCO conference. Not only is he one of Canada’s most vocal integrationists but he is devoted to expanding the NAFTA trading model through the proliferation of so-called gateways and trade corridors that can only add more junk to the North American marketplace during a time when we need to be paring down, producing more locally, and reducing the environmentally and socially destructive volumes of global trade. For more information on trade corridors and the SPP, visit the Alliance for Democracy website: http://afd-headlines.blogspot.com/2008/03/spp-supercorridors-linking-mexico-us.html.
Official government representation of the Ontario-Quebec Gateway and Trade Corridor. |
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