North American Forum 2007 Naff Off

Many of us first became aquainted with the North American Forum when it held its now notorious "private, not secret" meeting in Banff last year.
This year's informal sister to the SPP brings some familiar names and themes :

North American Cooperation and Community
Vallarta Palace Hotel Nuevo Vallarta, Mexico
October 12-14, 2007

Under the Joint Chairmanship of:
The Hon. George Shultz, Former U.S Secretary of State
The Hon. Peter Lougheed, Former Premier of Alberta
The Hon. Pedro Aspe, Former Finance Minister of Mexico

II Strategic dimensions of the North American security and prosperity partnerships
Gustavo Mohar, Deputy Director, National Intelligence (CISEN)
Stephen Rigby, Executive Vice-President, Canada Border Services

III: Investing in competitiveness: new ideas and options for infrastructure, borders and business - Public/private partnerships, municipal bonds and border development
Tom d’Aquino, Canadian Council of Chief Executives
Ron Covais, President, The Americas, Lockheed Martin Corp.

IV: NAFTA at 15: where do we go from here? How to create a North American Community
Anne McLellan, former Deputy Prime Minister of Canada
Moderator: Robert Pastor, American University

VI: Energy in North America – Security, rationalization and climate change
James Gray, Former CEO Canadian Hunter Exploration
David O’Reilly, CEO, Chevron Corporation

Read the full Agenda on pdf H/t to Council of Canadians

Gotta love that title "Energy in NA - Security, rationalization, and climate change" as discussed by oilbidness.

Purportedly SPP booster John Ibbitson from the G&M attended as a supporter.
He later declared the SPP to be dead.
Perhaps the Mexican poolside buffet didn't agree with him.

NAFTA Superhighway Saga continues...

Once upon a time it was called a mere myth, a conspiracy theory apparently believed only by paranoid nutters :

John Ibbitson, G&M, July 2007 :

"The so-called NAFTA superhighway - a massive, 12-lane road, rail and oil-and-gas corridor that would snake from western Mexico, through the United States and into Canada, making it far easier and cheaper to import Chinese goods, thus completing the final destruction of the American and Canadian manufacturing sectors.
Of course there is no NAFTA superhighway, and no plans to build one, any more than there is any serious talk of a North American Union. "

Why, even NASCO, the North American SuperCorridor Coalition Inc., and previously the biggest booster of the NAFTA Superhighway, says so. From their Facts and Myths page :

"There is no new proposed 'NAFTA Superhighway' : There are no plans to build a new NAFTA Superhighway - it exists today as I-35."

Also they tell us : no amero, no NAU, and especially nothing to do with the Trans Texas Corridor and its over blown rhetoric about a SuperCorridor from Canada to Mexico.

Apparently NASCO is just aiming to fix I-35 up a little. And to stop us from bothering them about it, they have taken down this map, which used to grace the frontpage of their website and scare the shit out of everybody :

Because nowadays the NAFTA Superhighway is just business-as-usual :

Craig Offman, Natty Post, Dec. 2007 :

"Number two on the popular US web site Digg is a map of the NAFTA Superhighway on an Alberta Government web site. [Picture at top] Why in the name of free trade are so many people freaked out about this thoroughfare?
Many believe the transcontinental corridor is a myth.....The Ministry of Infrastructure and Transportation web site uses the exact phrase, showing a thoroughfare that begins in Manitoba and drops all the way down to West Texas.
When initially reached for comment, ministry communications director Jerry Bellikka said, “Where’s the secret agenda if it’s on a government web site?" He added that the controversy is a “pretty good example of political rhetoric getting twisted out of shape.”
After some further investigation, Mr. Bellikka reports that the name in question has been on the site for five years and is used to help inform truckers of certain weight restrictions. "We don't see any link between trucking weights and conspiracy theories," he said."

I do hope you're keeping up here.

Six months ago the NAFTA Superhighway was a conspiracy theory but now it's been demoted to a useful tool on a government website.

The SPP = Jelly beans ; the NAFTA Superhighway = trucking weights.

Now if only Manitoba Premier and Hemispheria member Gary Doer would keep up.

Speech from the Throne, Nov. 20, 2007

"Manitoba is also taking a major role in the development of a Mid-Continent Trade Corridor, connecting our northern Port of Churchill with trade markets throughout the central United States and Mexico. To advance the concept, an alliance has been built with business leaders and state and city governments spanning the entire length of the Corridor. When fully developed, the trade route will incorporate an “in-land port” in Winnipeg with pre-clearance for international shipping."

Oh dear. What's he on about?

That would be this : [bold mine]

"On September 19-21, 2007 , the Ports-to-Plains Trade Corridor Coalition hosted the Great Plains International Conference 2007 at the Adam’s Mark Hotel in Denver, Colorado, gathering hundreds of elected and government officials, business leaders, communities and citizens from Laredo, Texas, and the Alberta-Montana border, to examine how to work together to secure the benefits of trade, promote energy security and strengthen trade linkages to western Canada, on behalf of the communities of the Great Plains, North America’s energy and agricultural heartland. The Colorado Department of Transportation and Texas Department of Transportation were co-hosts. 

Major events of the conference included: Texas Transportation Commissioner Fred Underwood announced TxDOT would develop financial master plan for the Ports-to-Plains project; Len Mitzel, a Member of Legislative Assembly of the Province of Alberta, Canada’s energy powerhouse and a potential candidate for Coalition membership, spoke on behalf of the Alberta Minister of Transportation, and invited Coalition leadership (including state officials) to Alberta for follow-up meetings. 

The Great Plains International Conference was the first formal gathering of three Congressionally-designated north-south High Priority Corridors that, together, form the primary trade corridor serving the states of the Great Plains: Ports-to-Plains (from Laredo to Denver); The Heartland Expressway (from Denver to Rapid City, South Dakota); and the Theodore Roosevelt Expressway (from Rapid City to the Canadian border provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan). 

Ron Covais, President of Lockheed Martin Americas, and U.S. Chair, North American Competitiveness Council, reported upon the recent Montebello Summit of the NAFTA heads of state, and the recent NACC report on the NAFTA Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP).Two post-9/11 realities dominate NACC activities, he said:
1) After 9/11, international business and homeland security are intertwined; and
2) North American business will increasingly grapple with intense competition from the “BRIC” nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China).
Under the circumstances, it is both necessary and appropriate to have the private sector on the front lines helping NAFTA governments to develop strategies for a secure, prosperous North America.The Great Plains conference helped to demonstrate that the Ports-to-Plains coalition has significant potential as a NAFTA-wide program, embracing interests from Coahuila to Alberta. Coalition staff and leadership have begun planning on next steps to more fully engage U.S. states and Canadian provinces on the northern end of the Great Plains region, particularly those at key connection points at the border, including Alberta, Saskatchewan and Montana."

(end of transcript)

.

Ron Covais, the NACC, the Texas Superhighway model, talk of Alberta's oilsands, eager Canadian politicians from Alberta and Manitoba...doesn't look good, does it?

So far even they admit they don't have the money to pull it off.

Ports-to-Plains President Michael Reeves' boast of "together, we have secured over $270 million to develop, build and improve the Corridor in all 9 Coalition states" is a drop in the Superhighway superbucket.

But with eager beavers like Manitoba's Gary Doer and Alberta's Len Mitzel "who attended on behalf of Alberta Minister of Transportation Luke Ouellette" on board, they are at least a couple of drips closer.

.

From only "a conspiracy myth" to just about "trucking weights" to a trans-border lobby group having the Trans Texas Corridor Commissioner develop a "financial master plan" for a North American Superhighway.

Have another look at that map at the very top again. It's from a Canadian government website.

Update : Politics 'n Poetry has the Prairie-to-Ports Gateway Map .

.

SPP, not just for cows anymore

Robert Pastor : "It's time for Canada to take the lead to propose rule-based institutions that permit cows to roam across borders and people to declare: I am not just a Canadian, a Mexican, or a U.S. citizen; I am also a North American."

Pastor, author of Toward a North American Community, director of the North American Forum on Integration, and tireless cheerleader for "a North American consciousness", is at the University of Ottawa today, plumping for letting the little people in on his pet cow-freeing project :

Mr. Pastor said the SPP summit at Montebello this August "offers an opportunity for the leaders to open the process, to invite in more civil society groups," including academics, environmentalists, unions, the media and state and provincial legislators."

Unlike Ron Covais and his co-conspirators in the North American Competitiveness Council who advocate for "integration by stealth", Pastor says : "What we need is something more bold."

Well, exactly.
Pastor was quite bold himself when he spoke to the Canadian Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade in Feb 2002 on implementation of a common currency :

There are three options for us. Option one is de facto dollarization. That is to say, no government makes a decision, and increasingly Canada and Mexico use the U.S. dollar.

The number two option is de jure dollarization. Three governments all sit down and they decide the dollar makes sense: let's just use a single currency.

The third option is a unified currency. Herbert Grubel has proposed this idea of the amero.

I think it's in the long-term interest of the United States to propose or to discuss a scheme in which all three countries feel there is space for them to define a portion of this larger entity of an amero system, not a dollar system.

Some of the FAIT MPs promptly widdled on the carpet in their gratitude and excitement.
See how much better it is to be open and transparent and let "state and provincial legislators" "feel there is a space for them" in the decision-making?

Actually, the mewling sychophantic behavior of the MPs aside, I heartily advocate Pastor's strategy.

Pastor promotes the SPP as NAFTA-Plus.
NAFTA overrides Canadian law for the benefit of corporations to which it affords the rights and freedoms previously reserved for people. It allows quisling business groups like the Canadian Council of Chief Executives an increasingly large say in public policy issues while excluding the public. It advocates the deregulation and privatization of hard-won public services like health and education, promotes intellectual property rights of corporations over the needs of consumers, nullifies control over foreign investment, and guts protection for workers, stakeholders, and the environment.

In 1993, Canadians reacted to the wholesale promotion of Mulroney's corporate free trade agenda by throwing him out on his ass and reducing the Cons to two seats in the House.
So let's hope the Cons listen to Pastor today and Canada is provided with the opportunity to hear them defend this NAFTA-Plus in the House. And the sooner the better.

Garth wakes up. Somewhat.

H/T Accidental Deliberations : Transparent

Whiny-ass deep integration titty-babies

I mean, what the hell is taking so long?

WASHINGTON (CP) - Some major U.S. businesses are worried that North American co-operation is falling off the agenda, even as leaders of the three countries get ready to meet in Quebec in August.
Uncertainty about progress on a host of cross-border initiatives is rattling some nerves in American boardrooms before President George W. Bush joins Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexico's Felipe Calderon for an annual get-together.

Some quotes from above-mentioned WADITBs :

"There has to be a plan to implement this, a road map. They asked the
business community to do a lot. We're not seeing any results."
"If we end up with nothing, why would I want to bring my chairman into an
embarrassing meeting?"
"Either they demonstrate some progress, change the agenda or the leaders don't meet."

I'm sorry, what was that last bit again?

"Either they demonstrate some progress, change the agenda or the leaders
don't meet."

Yes, that's what I thought you said.

And then there's Ron Covais. You remember Ron Covais, don't you?
President of Lockheed Martin Americas, former Pentagon adviser to Dick Cheney, chair of the North American Competitiveness Council and the not-so-secret-after-all Banff meeting, and the author of these happy remarks as reported in Macleans last year :

Ron Covais is in a hurry. Covais figures they've got less than two years of
political will to make it happen. That's when the Bush administration exits, and
"The clock will stop if the Harper minority government falls or a new government
is elected."

"The guidance from the ministers was, 'tell us what we need to do and we'll
make it happen."

This is how the future of North America now promises to be written: not in
a sweeping trade agreement on which elections will turn, but by the accretion of
hundreds of incremental changes implemented by executive agencies, bureaucracies
and regulators. "We've decided not to recommend any things that would require
legislative changes," says Covais. "Because we won't get anywhere."

Well Ron isn't too happy with the slow rate of progress either:

"We're asking for a status update" from top bureaucrats, he said. "By
mid-June, we have to have at least a sense of where we're at."

Or what, asshole? You'll withdraw your support for all that non-legislative change? Take water and oil off the agenda to punish us? Toss the keys to the kingdoms and go home? What exactly?

Luckily Canadian Council of Chief Executives chief quisling and NAU cheerleader Tom D'Aquino is right there to reassure Colonel Sanders that the Canadian chickens really really support whatever the hell it is the colonel wants this time :

"The view from Canada is that all the fretting is unnecessary, said Thomas
d'Aquino. "I would like to see more speed," but there's already been a lot of
movement, he said."

And he has a remedy :

"One problem, he said, is that the leaders haven't been out publicly
defending the SPP, "even though armies are working on it."
"We are urging our governments to do that."

Bring it, Tom. Bring it. We'd love to hear Harper defend being called to account by your US corporate buddies.

Bonus : If you click the Macleans link above for the Ron Covais quotes, you'll also find some bonus bitching from Dr. Ron Pastor, author of "Toward A North American Community" and member of the board of directors for the North American Forum on Integration, the group shilling the NAU to students.


H/T Mes Amis for the CP link
Cross-posted at The Galloping Beaver