The Jelly Bean Summit
Harper sugarcoated the SPP, glossed over the opposition, and helped consolidate corporate control over deep integration. So why are we smiling? Because we still won.
If Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s
good at anything it’s the art of distraction.
At his first Security and
Prosperity Partnership summit in
March 2006, a criminal fashion
statement stole the show. Instead of
talking about how 30 CEOs had been handed control over the unpopular process
of North American economic and
security integration, the media focused
on the dreadful fishing vest he wore for a
photo op. Score one for secrecy and zero
for democracy, we said at the time.
This August, Harper looked more
at ease, confident even, as he, U.S.
President George Bush and Mexican
President Felipe Calderón shared a stage,
sans cravats, to end the 2007 Leaders’
Summit in Montebello, Quebec. The
only people who stood out were a few
Quebec police officers posing as rockwielding
protesters among the thousands
who had gathered outside the gates of
the luxury hotel.
Yet despite the protests in Montebello
and across the country, as well as the
new political opposition to the SPP – the
Liberals, NDP, Bloc and Greens all want
a public debate – distraction again reared
its ugly head! With a single comment,
Harper belittled all legitimate criticism
of the “security and prosperity” agenda
and the secrecy with which it is being
implemented.
“Is the sovereignty of Canada going
to fall apart if we standardize the jelly
bean?” asked our Prime Minister with a
smirk. “You know, I don’t think so.”
It doesn’t take a candy lover to see what’s
wrong with that statement. Jelly beans
aside, the integration agenda is on track,
even without the broader public support
that fans and foes of the SPP claim will
be necessary to keep the process moving.
WHO NEEDS RULES?
The pride of the most recent SPP summit,
for Harper as well as for the North
American Competitiveness Council, was
the announcement of a new voluntary
North American Regulatory Cooperation
Framework. Tom d’Aquino, President
of the Canadian Council of Chief
Executives, gloated that this framework,
designed to discourage regulation more
than anything, was a key recommendation
of the NACC in its February 2007
report to SPP ministers.
That’s true enough, but regulatory harmonization
has been the first priority of
the SPP’s so-called Prosperity Agenda
since 2005, based on big business lobbying
to remove “non-tariff” barriers to
North American trade. “Non-tariff” is
code for all differences on health, labour,
safety, manufacturing and environmental
rules between Canada, the United States
and Mexico. Rules in one country that
are stricter than any other are referred
to as “trade barriers,” and so the goal of
regulatory harmonization is naturally the
lowering of health and safety standards
across the continent.
We saw this logic in action earlier this
year when it surfaced that thanks to the
SPP, Canada was increasing pesticide residue limits on hundreds of fruits and
vegetables in order to match lower standards
in the United States. Jelly beans
aren’t a food staple for most people but
we all need our greens, which by U.S.
request will now be covered in even more
pesticides.
The 2007 regulatory cooperation framework
goes further than this by making
room for U.S. input into Canadian rules
“throughout the rule development process
to avoid incompatibility issues.” This
is called “transparency” but in practice it
will mean vetting significant new regulations
– bans on trans fats or toxic chemicals,
or stricter greenhouse gas emissions
– by U.S. regulators first.
If industrial standards just kept getting
better down south, matching them might not be so bad. But a prominent legacy
of the Bush administration has been the
wholesale deregulation of industry and a
move toward voluntary compliance with
existing rules. And just this past July, an
executive order came into effect that centralizes
the authority over regulation in
the hands of the White House.
“Business groups welcomed the executive
order, saying it had the potential to
reduce what they saw as the burden of
federal regulations,” reported the New
York Times in January 2007 (emphasis
ours), when Bush appropriated these
new powers from groups like the already
struggling Environmental Protection
Agency. That’s because it requires agencies
to prove a “specific market failure” to
justify government intervention.
Regulatory convergence with the U.S.
will require Canada to adopt a model
whereby industry largely regulates itself.
If Harper doesn’t think that’s an issue of
sovereignty he’s either a fool or he is purposely
misleading Canadians about the
extent of the SPP’s regulatory agenda.
HOORAY FOR HOLLYWOOD
Harper, Bush and Calderón announced
several other policy changes with clear
impacts on sovereignty.
First, there is the new Intellectual Property
Action Plan, “for combating piracy and
counterfeiting,” according to a statement.
It sounds harmless enough, but the plan is
actually the result of intense lobbying from
Hollywood and U.S. officials who have
been making frequent, highly unscientific
complaints on behalf of a small but loud
business community.
According to Michael Geist, Canada
Research Chair of Internet and
E-commerce Law at the University of
Ottawa, Hollywood lobby groups and
media reports have wrongly claimed
that Canada is the source of 70 per
cent of illegally recorded movies when
in fact Canada meets its international
obligations on intellectual property.
Ambassador David Wilkins has been
pestering us too, just like his predecessor
Paul Cellucci did, to pump up Canada’s
military.
Apparently the pressure works – just look
at Canada’s transformed military, the
softwood lumber sellout, and just this
year, the Harper government’s law that
criminalizes the practice of recording
Hollywood movies in the theatres. It may
not sound like much, but according to
Geist, Canada’s laws already conformed
to international standards. This was a
corporate sellout in order to please Bush
and Hollywood.
DRAINING OUR ENERGY
Harper wimped out on energy, too, by
signing a benign-sounding “agreement
for cooperation in energy and technology.”
It is essentially a political pitch for
work already being carried out through
the North American Energy Working
Group, which has so far produced a continental
natural gas vision – what’s ours is
Bush’s – and endorsed a fivefold increase
in tar sands production, all for export to
the United States.
From previous political pitches, it’s clear
that this agreement is also mostly about
acceding to Bush’s energy vision for the
continent.
Almost in lockstep with Bush, Harper
has chosen to stall real change on the
energy and environment fronts in order
to boost the most unsustainable industries
out there: biofuels that require vast
tracts of intensive agriculture to grow;
so-called clean coal that doesn’t exactly
remove pollutants so much as displace
them and dangerous liquefied natural gas
plants where highly flammable liquid gas
from overseas is re-gasified in Canada to
be piped to the U.S. market.
Harper says that all this will make
Canada a “clean energy superpower,” but
what kind of superpower writes energy
policy based not on national needs but
on priorities set by the White House?
One especially contentious aspect of
Harper’s “clean” agenda is his love affair
with nuclear power, particularly its role
in the Alberta tar sands.
“It’s not a question of if, it’s a
question of when, in my mind,”
said Energy Minister Gary Lunn in
December 2006. “I think nuclear can
play a very significant role in the oil
sands. I’m very, very keen.”
This would fit in with Bush’s energy vision
just fine. Not only will it ensure that
America gets the crude oil it wants out of
Alberta’s tar sands, accelerating environmental
destruction and water depletion
in the process. But a pro-nuclear Canada
would be in a better position, politically, to
supply all the uranium Bush will need to
fuel his own nuclear renaissance.
MAJOR BACKLASH
Linking these three new SPP items is
the underlying issue of democracy, and
whose security and prosperity deep integration
will enhance. Despite clear gains
for corporate Canada, the SPP is also suffering
a major backlash from friends and
foes alike.
The North American Competitiveness
Council was yet again the only nongovernmental
group allowed full access
to our leaders at Montebello, despite
numerous calls that it be opened up to
public and parliamentary debate. The
Hudson Institute, a U.S. think tank
favourable to deep integration, claimed
that without congressional involvement
in the U.S. the trilateral talks were destined
to collapse. The chorus is getting
so loud that even the 30-odd CEOs on
the NACC are starting to worry about a
lack of will behind the SPP.
“While overall progress to date has been
encouraging, the NACC is concerned
that on a handful of important issues
progress has stalled and the spirit of the
SPP is being undermined,” they wrote in
their August report to leaders. “Above all,
we urge the leaders to make it clear to all
levels of their governments that sustained
progress on the SPP agenda is a strategic
priority.”
OPPOSITION MOUNTING
That will be difficult with all four main
opposition parties – Liberals, Greens,
NDP and Bloc – now calling for more
public oversight and questioning some
of the bigger-ticket items like regulatory
harmonization, bulk water exports and
the wholesale acceptance of draconian
U.S. security policies.
Committee hearings into the SPP this
past spring clearly sparked an interest
in the SPP on the Hill. It also forced
the political parties to acknowledge the
public’s response to the agreement, which
has been overwhelmingly negative.
The Liberals, who wrote the SPP to
begin with, have now incorporated the
Council of Canadians’ demands into
their own position on the SPP, including
“disclosing the complete list of SPP
working groups, their contact persons
and participating membership [and]
requiring them to provide opportunities
for public input.”
Despite all the fuss, the CEOs of the
NACC are currently demanding more
power and influence from our leaders. In
their August report, the group claims that
“We are prepared … to move beyond
our initial report to ministers, whether
by considering additional action items
within our three priority areas of border
facilitation, regulatory cooperation, and
energy integration or by proposing additional
priorities.
“With the support of the Leaders, we
would be pleased to engage on other
strategic issues affecting the competitiveness
and security of the North American
economies.”
Not so long ago, these same CEOs considered
signing on to missile defence a “strategic
issue” affecting Canada’s competitiveness.
Ditto for joining the 2003 U.S. invasion
of Iraq. If we didn’t partner up with
Bush on these two issues it was curtains for
the Canadian economy, they said.
Canadians didn’t buy it then and they
don’t buy it now. But if the NACC
gets its way, corporate influence would trump public and even political resistance
in future instances where saving
face with the U.S. administration is
declared a matter of North American
“competitiveness.”
MOMENTUM INCREASING
The movement against deep integration
has grown substantially in the last year
thanks largely to Council of Canadians
activists fighting the SPP across the
country. Harper tried his best to shrug
off this criticism with his quip about
jelly beans. And while a few news reporters
fell for the joke, Canadians saw right
through our Prime Minister’s cynical
comment.
“If this is such a wonderful deal and it is
about protecting North Americans from
shoddy products or whatever they’re now
saying ... then be proud of it, stand up,
tell us what’s in it ... and send it to our
Parliament for oversight,” said Maude
Barlow, National Chairperson of the
Council of Canadians, in an interview
with CBC.
The sentiment was repeated over and
over again in letters to newspapers and
to Prime Minister Harper, demanding
that Canada put an end to deep integration
with the United States. It’s now up
to us to keep the pressure on our leaders
as Parliament begins its fall session and
the Conservatives try to distract us once
again with a new agenda for the next
year.
The momentum is on our side, a public
consensus is forming against the SPP, and
despite some limited gains at Montebello
for the corporate backers of the SPP,
Canadians have a lot to smile about.
Stuart Trew is a Researcher-Writer at the Council of Canadians.
Photo credit: Christina Riley
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