Posted on 07/15/2006 2:40:20 AM PDT by Trupolitik
Hockey may be Canada's national sport but now that we're all North Americans, local ties, it seems, are the casualty of international competitiveness. It's happening again with Canada's mining giants Inco and Falconbridge.
If North American integration confuses loyalties, it also rallies those on the further reaches of the ideological spectrum. When the Canadian prime minister recently visited the U.S. president, Linda McQuaig coyly suggested in her Toronto Star column that the question isn't how well these two conservative soul mates get along, but "What are they up to?"
In the U.S., arch-conservative Jerome R. Corsi, in his Human Events Online column, has no doubts. "President Bush is pursuing a globalist agenda to create a North American Union, effectively erasing our borders with both Mexico and Canada," he huffed on May 19. The blueprint, he continued, "was laid out in a May 2005 report entitled 'Building a North American Community,' published by the left-of-center Council on Foreign Relations." And the modus operandi for this blueprint with a target enactment date of 2010? None other than The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America signed by Canada, Mexico and the United States at Waco, Texas in March 2005.
Is this a replay of the free-trade debate in 1988?
The issues are similar, with at least a few overlapping players. For instance, through the offices of the independent U.S. think tank, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), with the Canadian Council of Chief Executives and the Consejo Mexicano de Asuntos Internacionales, elite business, policy and scholarly interests are today's prime movers. Their task force, whose Canadian chair is former finance minister John Manley, produced the report entitled "Building a North American Community."
Published shortly after the announcement of the Security and Prosperity Partnership, its central premise is "the establishment by 2010 of a North American economic and security community, the boundaries of which would be defined by a common external tariff and an outer security perimeter within which the movement of people, products and capital will be legal, orderly and safe ..."
Make no mistake, though, about the real genesis of the movement toward greater North American integration, where crisis matters more than lobbyists or think tanks.
In 1994, it was the Mexican peso crisis that revealed the first of many institutional failings of NAFTA and spurred American political scientist Robert A. Pastor, now a member of the CFR task force, to write Toward a North American Community: Lessons from the Old World for the New.
Then Sept. 11, 2001, pushed governments into action. Trinational summits at Waco and Cancun tell the rest of the story.
To be sure, the CFR task force is a step ahead of governments and its influence is undeniably strong. And in a paper whose dominant themes are harmonization, mobility and oversight, the implications for Canada, the U.S. and Mexico are undeniably huge. Its recommendation to establish a permanent dispute-resolutions tribunal, for instance, could have a profound effect on the protracted agony of softwood lumber disputes (including the current deal) and a snowballing inventory of litigation launched under NAFTA's Chapters 11 and 19.
McQuaig and Corsi are right. This paper should be widely read, and not just because of trade issues. As the continental project trundles forward, must our loyalties remain at sea?
National sovereignty concerns may be addressed with precise legal language and government-to-government structures with clear lines of accountability, but issues about Canadian unity are less easily addressed. Stronger north-south ties may further weaken tenuous east-west ties, but as the Mumbai and Mideast bombings forcefully teach, security is a powerful incentive to strengthen all ties.
If institutional integrity is the key to successful co-operation in North America, Canada's institutions can be no less sturdy. Only then will our champions have the grounding necessary to flourish and make their mark, singly or as part of the larger team, in an increasingly troubled world.
They make this plain by stating:
McQuaig and Corsi are right. This paper should be widely read, and not just because of trade issues. As the continental project trundles forward, must our loyalties remain at sea?
National sovereignty concerns may be addressed with precise legal language and government-to-government structures with clear lines of accountability
CFR Study: Building a North American Union http://www.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/NorthAmerica_TF_final.pdf
Security and Prosperity Partenrship Agreement: http://www.spp.gov/
National sovereignty....what's that?
I suppose we are supposed to believe it is the "ability" to contractually consent away the jurisdiction of constitutional courts in lieu of an international dispute board, even though neither the treaty, the dispute courts, nor were the officers of said courts approved by the 2/3 of the Senate.
My God, that's terrible.
is there a North American Union ping list?
Not that I am aware of. Do you know how to do that?
Yeah, I'm sure the US will just sign on and shrug it's shoulders and say "Ah, they're over that whole 9-11 thing, those Muslim terrorists who might sneak in from Canada". That's why this must be STOPPED, STOPPED!
Rather than copying the Europeans (there is very little to gain from Europe currently), Mexico and Canada should be encouraged to become part of the United States; for Mexico there could be status of territory longer, until it reaches a status close to the United States (Alabama is the lowest, so that state could be used as a threshold).
Article IV, section 3:"New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress."
I agree. Even if we disregard the constitutional issues, the free flow of Mexican ctitizens to the US and Canada will wreck the middle class. Also, with little exposure and understanding to the fundamentals of our democratic institutions we cannot insure they would be good stewards of our Republic.
But there are obviously more knowledgeable people who have pinglist who would know.
But if Mexico (and Canada to some extent) were to become part of the united states, the Democrats, at the behest of the "watermelons" will make them stop Oil production, Mining and Timber operations.
Then we'd be completely 'up the creek and no paddles in sight' rather than just mostly 'up the creek'.
While the United States would probably turn more toward liberalism (especially if Mexico's lands are given statehood before full development; Mexicans are generally very socially conservative, and probably would become economically if they develop), the country could gain a lot, too.
Not to mention the continued erosion of US court protection for American businesses. Mexican and Canadian "ministers" can out vote us, and even if it is against our National inerest will we be bound by their decision.
I have a ping list, and I just have the names listed on my home page. When a thread surfaces, I copy and paste those names in the TO field. Pretty low tech, I think some others have a more advanced method.
But I sure would like to be on this ping list, if one develops...
These agreements take decisions out of the hands of all of our legislatures an therefore our voters, and into the hands of "appointed ministers". Even if Mexico was as developed as the US and Canada, we would all still lose the ability of each of our voters to dictate our interests. Why must we give up normal nation state relations?
Canada has a problem. For years they have paid for their social programs by not spending a cent on their military and depending on their "friends" to the south to protect them.
This worked out fine until Canada decided that "they" did not want to be friends with their neighbor to the south. So now they have a problem. What to do. They don't have the money to develop military so I guess their idea is to try to sucker their "friends" to the south into believing that North America should all be one United country with of course....each country having equal say on everything.
George Bush may not fall for this crap but I am sure that any Liberal we elect will.
Something we had before the Korean crisis. The unencumbered right to declare war.
I can see a day when all the Americas, North and South, will be linked in a mighty system, a system in which the errors and misunderstandings of the past will be submerged one by one in a rising tide of prosperity and interdependence. We know that the misunderstandings of centuries are not to be wiped away in a day or wiped away in an hour. But we pledge, we pledge that human sympathy -- what our neighbors to the South call an attitude of "simpatico" -- no less than enlightened self-interest will be our guide.
Barry Goldwater, Republican National Convention, San Francisco, 16 July 1964,
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