This is my pet battle, but I will do my very best to keep an open mind and to keep from turning into a rabid screaming freak. ;)




To start:

Ren wrote:

And the idea of Integrating Canada/Us/Mexico? I'd LOVE to see this become an active topic of discussion in the current ongoing debates, and I'd love to see it happen, though I know it would be horribly painful in the short term and not sure what the long-term benefits would be. I also don't think it should stop there...why leave out the rest of the world? 1 World, 1 People, 1 Economy, 1 set of Laws...etc...
Yes I know, pipe dreams, but dammit its a good one...at least In MY opinion...

I'm going to call you on this. I'm hoping you were joking. :)

One set of laws? Really? Whose? One economy? Benefiting whom? One people? How? Humans can't even decide if gay people should be killed or allowed to marry, if women are second class citizens or equals and if visible minorities deserve to be considered people or not.

But one world, yes, that's obvious.


The road to North American Integration, or the North American Community as it is often called in the US, the word 'community' being used to add some fuzzy warmth to an incredibly unfuzzy plan, is well under way. Bush will give you a patronising smile and call you a 'conspiracy theorist' effectivley ending any debate because theorists are nuts, hands down. This has, however, been fairly well documented and publicised in Mexico. Harper pretends he didn't hear the question when asked.

Now, to give you proof, I'll back myself up with links and quotes from credible sources.

In 2005 the leaders of the US, Canada and Mexico got together behind closed doors to shake hands on the Security and Prosperity Partnership. The goal of the SPP is to speed up the corporate continental goal of economic integration by linking it with US security demands. Of course it is really only one step in a corporate plan that started back with NAFTA and has been slowly being stepped up ever since.


Who are the people that drive and plan this initiative? Well, it's run by an all-CEO group. All decisions affecting the SPP will be dealt with in this manner: 'meetings' for business, 'consultaions' for stakeholders and 'briefings' for government. Is that they way it should work? The CEOs of big business--like Wal-Mart--deciding whether or not your country should implement one law or another--because that's how the SPP works. The SPP tells governments how to best serve their interests. What happened to such scuzzy things as lobbying? Quaint. Not useful. This bypasses that altogether. It ignores workers groups and unions, civil groups and like I said, the people who you vote into office to make the decisions for you.

This is not going to be debated. This is a done deal. It's being implemented.

The players:

A) NACC: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Amer … ss_Council

"Composed of 30 corporate representatives from some of North America's largest companies, the North American Competitiveness Council has been mandated to set priorities for the SPP and to act as a stable driver of the integration process through changes in government in all three countries." (emphasis mine)

"Ron Covais of Lockheed Martin told Savage that, "The guidance from the ministers was, 'tell us what we need to do and we'll make it happen,'" and that rather than going through the legislative process in any country, the Security and Prosperity Partnership must be implemented in incremental changes by executive agencies, bureaucrats and regulators. "We've decided not to recommend any things that would require legislative changes...""

"Despite a lack of in-depth information about the NACC, opposition to it in both the U.S. and Canada has focused on the fact that it grants the corporate sector a formal role in the Security and Prosperity Partnership which has thus far been denied to the public, citizens organizations, labour and many legislators, who are still in the dark about the continental pact." (emphasis mine)


B) The Council on Foreign Relations: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_on … _Relations  and  http://www.cfr.org/publication/8102/

They headed up the group that came up with "Building a North American Community", which takes things several steps beyond the SPP while at the same time being very supportive of the SPP.

C) The CCCE http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CCCE

"Big Business lobbies like the CCCE drafted almost all of the SPP's 300 initiatives and they continue to be the only Canadian group with any input into the SPP." 4

Members of the CFR and the CCCE and NACC are often interchangable.

How is this bad?

It endorses bulk water exports from Canada, and our government won't be able to have any say in the issue, just big business. "Leaked documents from a project established to guide the Security and Prosperity Partnership clearly put water exports on the table. The North American Future 2025 project, an iniative of the U.S. Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in collaboration with the Conference Board of Canada and the Centro do Investigacion y Decencia Economicas (CIDE), convened several meetings last spring, one of which discussed “water consumption, water transfers and artificial diversions of bulk water." " 2

For Mexico? "The energy implications that run through the SPP are diverse and massive...Also by 2010, to break up Mexico’s national oil company, Petro´leos de Me´xixo (PEMEX), with its natural gas division
to become a new corporation to be called GASMEX. By 2008, to put out ‘a benchmark analysis that illustrates PEMEX’s operating and financial performance gaps.’ Wilson claimed these recommendations, among others, ‘are aimed at dismantling Mexico’s publicly owned and managed energy sector."1

And the US? Well, we've already signed a treaty, also left pretty much untouched by the media, mandating military sharing in civil emergencies. This is the part 'Security' avenue of the picture. First, define civil emergency. A forest fire? Doesn't the US have people to fight fires? Don't our countries already often share fire fighting forces during such emergencies? How about a hurricane? Well, you have FEMA, don't you? Do you really want the Canadian military showing up on your doorstep during such emergencies? Don't you already have Blackwater? Do you really need the military of another nation showing up on your doorstep as a mercenary force to help in civil emergencies? 3   

It also mandates a sweeping increase in the migrant worker force in the US. What about Americans working American jobs? No? Don't need 'em. Mexicans are cheaper.


I just have to bring TILMA into this. The Trade, Investment and Labour Mobilty Agreement. Why? Well, this is how the SPP works, small incremental changes to government. In Canada the SPP faced the problem of the fact that the provinces dictate a lot of their own pilicies and the federal government couldn't implement the SPP changes without first changing our provinces. So, in steps TILMA. Its job is to grant corporations the ability to work, free from any impediments of law and regulation. It allows corporations to sue the province if that province institutes any policies, or already had policies in place that would harm profits. The language says that corporations can sue the government repeatedly for the same 'crime' at 5 mil a pop. Governments now have to change all the rules so that they are the "least restrictive as possible" to the function of corporations in their search for profit.

Do you want chemical companies suing your government repeatedly for refusing to allow them the "least restrictive as possible" avenues to function? So the government will have to change such things as emissions and dumping laws that might interfere with profit mongering or they risk getting sued perpetually until it is done.

This is the overall working ethic of the SPP. This is how they plan to go forth and make profit in the world they restructure in their image. TILMA is, incidentally, just a lite version of NAFTA's chapter 11, which gives the same benefit to corporations: the ability to sue the pants off a government for making their own rules in the best interest of the people and for allowing things like federally-run programs and organisations to compepte with for-profit organisations.

The SPP doesn't stop at trade. It's policies cover:

environmental protection
security
energy
food and health standards
foreign affairs
military
immigration

Not surprisingly, there is only one of Canada's six biggest political parties this isn't vehemently opposed to this, and that the the one party that is in power right now. The Canadian public, when they find out are equally opposed. The Mexican public tends towards horrified, though I can't confirm this, being unable to read spanish, so it must remain anecdotal. I've read that they've been able to follow this in the media, while it's been ignored in the US and Canadian press.

Tell me how you benefit by allowing corporations to set all the standards? Or how Canada and Mexico benefit by requiring that we integrate our security and military to that of the US? What happens when we disagree on an issue of foreign policy? Then, what? We're not with you so we're with the terrorists? Critics in Mexico have been fairly scathing in this issue, going to far as to state that it makes them an enemy of the US if they do not agree to follow US foreign policy because the SPP will mandate that we have no say in the matter.

Unfortunatly I haven't been able to find any good, above-the-board US-based websites that deal with this issue. I haven't tried very hard, because my fight requires that I work within Canada in hope of changing these policies. The few US sites I've found just looked cheap, tin-foil hatty and just sounded more like counterintelligence than intelligence. I have found articles in the US alternative media, however, most taking a dissenting viewpoint towards the SPP and NA Integration.

I don't think I need to mention how undemocratic this is, seeing it circumvents even our governments. Civil rights groups that I've come across that have brought it up are also radically opposed. There are large sections in the SPP dedicated to such things as no-fly lists, the NEXUS program, foreign policy, fingerprinting and biometrics, standardised ID, etc.

Okay. I'll let you guys chew on this for a bit.

Info:

http://canadians.org/integratethis/index.html

http://canadians.org/DI/documents/NAFTA_SPP_Foster.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_a … th_America















1  http://canadians.org/DI/documents/NAFTA_SPP_Foster.pdf

2 http://canadians.org/integratethis/wate … an-18.html

3 http://www.northcom.mil/News/2008/021408.html

4 "Behind Closed Doors," The Council of Canadians, August 2007