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June 2, 2008 An essay in the Fort Worth, Texas Star-Telegram this weekend by Mexican journalist Anne Vigna describes the impact NAFTA has had on workers in her country. While uglier than Canada’s free-trade history with the United States, the reality is similar in many ways. “Increased productivity has not raised wages which, despite promises, have shown no convergence with those north of the border,” writes Vigna. “Income disparities in member countries have continued to grow since NAFTA came into effect, most strongly in Mexico. Compared with the numbers for the preceding decade (1984-94), just 10 per cent of Mexican households saw their income increase; 90 per cent experienced decline or stagnation.” The gap between rich and poor has also widened in Canada since we signed the first free trade agreement with the United States in 1988, according to a recent Statistics Canada report. The FTA and NAFTA were supposed to “lift all boats,” as free-market ideologues often claim, but they have tended to lift only some boats – the rich and very rich. Vigna writes that NAFTA “radically changed the landscape, and NAFTA+, as it is called, could prove even more radical.” That’s because they deepen an economic relationship designed by business interests for business interests. When Canada, the U.S. and Mexico created the Security and Prosperity Partnership in 2005, “They were following the recommendations of the Independent Task Force on the Future of North America, which brings together the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations and its Mexican equivalent, the Consejo Mexicano de Asuntos Internacionales. All three bodies are entirely composed of business interests,” writes Vigna. She then quotes David Chapdelaine, professor of international relations at the University of Montreal, on the North American Competitiveness Council, which was made up of many of the same groups who developed the SPP plan to begin with. "The business leaders who make up the NACC have privileged access to every level of the SPP [Security and Prosperity Partnership] hierarchy,” says Chapdelaine in Vigna’s essay. “The power to make decisions is being delegated to subordinate organizations whose exact composition, along with the place and date of their meetings, has not been made public. This is creating a significant deficit in democratic legitimacy."
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