Posted on 06/29/2007 7:42:24 AM PDT by BGHater
Conspiracy theorists can rub their hands in glee following release this week of a new book spilling the beans on a not-so-secret plot to amalgamate Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.
The plot for continental integration, known in official circles as the Security and Prosperity Partnership, is freshly outlined in an expose, The Late Great USA: The Coming Merger with Mexico and Canada, by author Jerome Corsi.
The new geographic unit, the American writer predicts, will have shared borders, a common currency "and utterly no voice for average Americans." It is "the beginning of a European Union-like nightmare," writes Corsi whose panic may be a bit overstated, although the Council of Canadians doesn't think so.
On its website (www.canadians.org/integratethis), the council documents a timeline for Canada-U.S. integration. It's not clear how Mexico fell off the map for the purposes of its timeline.
The left-leaning think-tank, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, and the Canadian Labour Congress also are opposed.
The next step in the Security and Prosperity Partnership -- SPP -- process, aimed primarily at streamlining business practices among the three countries, takes place Aug. 20 in Montebello, Que., where Stephen Harper will host a leaders' summit for George W. Bush and Felipe Calderon. Anti-SPP protests at the gathering are likely.
A recent press release from Harper's office outlines five priorities for the SPP agenda: Border security; enhancing North America's trade competitiveness; emergency management; avian and pandemic flu, and energy security.
So, why the panic? None of this sounds threatening to Canadian interests. Canada wouldn't buy into any common currency; heck, our buck is approaching par and the U.S. is fast becoming, in debt and deficit terms, a fiscal basketcase.
Nor is there any enthusiasm for an open border with countries to the south. Canada's economy is booming and the country obviously benefits from exercising maximum control over its bountiful domestic resources.
And this country to date has shown no inclination to relinquish power over its security arrangements.
Moreover, the EU, with 27 member countries and a population of nearly 500 million, is not a template that can be applied on this side of the pond. The EU brings together countries that have more similar sized populations than the North American trio.
On this continent, a union of one large superpower with two smaller, militarily far weaker, states would not be workable. The U.S. would be too dominant, given its population and GDP.
Canada has 33 million people; Mexico, a little more than 100 million, the U.S., 300 million.
The truth is that the SPP is not inimical to Canadian interests. The prevailing ire is limited to a close-knit group that always opposes measures fostering continental trilateralism. Politically, it features both the Green and New Democratic parties. The same players opposed NAFTA.
Fears relate to protection of Canada's freshwater and energy resources, and the sanctity of the country's consumer standards and regulations. These issues must be addressed.
But Canada, the U.S. and Mexico are living together in an age of terrorism and pandemics. They're also tight trade partners. In their own interests, each is simply attempting to maximize the benefit of living with the other.
The SPP has become controversial because of the secrecy that surrounded the project when it was first launched in 2005.
Conservatives, and the Liberal government before them, haven't explained the SPP issue to voters, and so are leaving the enterprise vulnerable from a public relations standpoint.
When the Commons standing committee on international trade held hearings on the SPP in May, Council of Canadians chair Maude Barlow voiced a legitimate objection: "The SPP process has been done without any parliamentary debate or public input.
"To date, the only stakeholders involved or consulted in the SPP process have been representatives of big business. Apparently when it comes to the future of North America, the public doesn't count, nor do elected officials."
It is in Ottawa's interest, as it seeks to advance the SPP agenda, to fully explain the enterprise and bring Canadians on board. As long as it neglects to do so, books will be published and protests planned to undermine it.
The problem with "streamlining business practices" is that it turns into "common regulatory schemes." With big business the only "stakeholder" at the table, you can bet that regulatory hurdles will be set up that preclude competition from smaller business, usually by means that require economies of scale in the paperwork business (IOW inefficiency). With common regulatory schemes the benefits of federalism vanish and natural law competition among regulatory entities disappears as well. Thus there are no checks and balances to corruption being the engine for how applicable choices are made.
It's stupid, unless you are a monopolist interested in buying favors from unaccountable bureaucrats.
Free trade agreements carry an inherent imperative toward regulating and harmonizing more and more activities within each of the countries party thereto.
In their quest for successively ever more level playing fields, there is a natural tendency for free traders to inevitably seek to harmonize not just explicit tariff rates, but tax systems, labor laws, environmental regulations and any other differences in internal law that tends to confer an advantage on businesses in one jurisdiction over those of another.
We have seen this in the EU, as it has advanced progressively over the years from a coal and steel union centured on the Ruhr to a European-wide federal government, and the forces that produced NAFTA are pushing in the same direction, though we are at a much earlier stage of the process.
If an elected government can't do what voters expect because of international "agreements" (in our case equivalent to unconstitutional treaties), democratic representation has then become a virtually meaningless exercise meant only for public mollification, nor is there transparency in these unaccountable international bureaucracies subject only to the whims of "stakeholders."
I like to call it, "Highly Organized Crime."
That’s why Bush is very flustered. These politicians and big business had this grand idea of a North American Union all along and we came along and kicked them in the teeth in the first round by sinking amnesty. How the hell is that border wall going to fit into their schemes? It just won’t look right and that’s why the damn thing is not being built! Never mind that terrorists can walk right in...It just doesn’t fit into our plans....Well boys!...your plans are about to change courtesy of a lot of very upset Americans!
When the Commons standing committee on international trade held hearings on the SPP in May, Council of Canadians chair Maude Barlow voiced a legitimate objection: "The SPP process has been done without any parliamentary debate or public input.
"To date, the only stakeholders involved or consulted in the SPP process have been representatives of big business. Apparently when it comes to the future of North America, the public doesn't count, nor do elected officials."
Here are the red flags waving in this lady's face, and not only is she writing the above, she's also pooh pooing "conspiracy theorists." It's obvious she doesn't see the real danger in all of this.
I'm not an alarmist by nature, but even I can see that a wall on the US southern border doesn't fit into sombody's big plan!
Thanks for the ping.
NAU ping
in chat already?
A major problem!
Whenever the "journalist" starts out with snide remarks against people who ask questions, I'm tuned out instantly. Whether it's protecting the border, the ports, the country, the globalists simply love to mock us. And pretend they are so much more intelligent than us.
A major problem!
I agree. According to the writer, though, all Ottawa has to do is "fully explain the enterprise and bring Canadians on board."
Also, according to the writer, the (not so) dire consequences of Ottawa not doing so means "books will be published and protests planned."
I thought the writer sounded like a flippant boob.
I agree. It's an attempt, imo, to downplay what should make any sane person genuinely alarmed.
It is interesting to think that the census of Canada is approximately the same as the illegal population in the U.S. Actually, I didn't realize the disparity of the populations of the 3 countries.
Whoops! What happened?
In the shadow of GWB’s grand aid package to Africa.
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