North America Next

A year ago the U.S. Department of Homeland Security gave Arizona State University $15 million to establish a Center of Excellence for Border Security and Immigration. The border security research centre is led by Rick Van Schoik, director of ASU’s North American Center for Transborder Studies.
Arizona State U presser, Feb. 2008 :

"The establishment of the center by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security follows more than two years of work assembling a team of U.S. universities, Mexican and Canadian institutions, government agencies, technology companies and national laboratories.

Research at the center will focus on new technologies such as surveillance, screening, data fusion and situational awareness using sensors, unmanned aerial vehicles and other technologies. The center will also provide research on population dynamics, immigration administration and enforcement, operational analysis, control and communications, immigration policy, civic integration and citizenship, border risk management and international governance."

Canadian advisors to NACTS include Former Deputy Prime Minister of Canada Anne McLellan and Christine Frechette, Director of the North American Forum on Integration, and York University and the University of Alberta, along with notable US deep integrationists Stephen Blank and Robert Pastor.

In their Feb 2009 policy paper "North America Next: A Report to President Obama on Building Sustainable Security and Competitiveness", they make eight recommendations calling for deeper integration, including :

• the inclusion of private sector and public-private P3 partnerships in meet-ups prior to the North American Trilateral Leaders’ Summits
• a National Security Council deputy to expand their "focus on traditional security to include law enforcement, commerce, transportation, environment, water, and regional development in the three countries"
• enhanced overall joint defense of North America which would allow Canada to continue responsibility for the Artic
• a joint revolving fund for infrastructure investments in North America
• a North American Greenhouse Gas Exchange Strategy to "ensure the United States continues to have priority access to Canada’s wealth of hydro-electricity, natural gas, light petroleum and uranium in exchange for offsets for the greenhouse gases created by their development"
• "moving the U.S.-Mexican and U.S.-Canadian borders (and their processing costs) away from the (actual) borders to the factories and farms from which trade goods originate", and
• "building and improving trade corridors like CANAMEX that go from northern Canada to southern Mexico".

The paper recommends less emphasis on "integration" and more on "plug and play interoperability".

Just keeping you up on the new North American language here.

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Lo and behold: the $100M Olympic Village bail-out

In a secret meeting on October 14, Vancouver council voted unanimously to lend $100-million to Millennium Development, the private corporation building the $1.1-billion 2010 Olympic Village, for cost over-runs.

Vancouver's Director of Finance, Estelle Lo, who reportedly had concerns about the city's involvement in the Olympic athletes' village and who was stripped of her control over financing decisions related to the athletes' village in April, was not at the meeting.

Ms Lo reportedly resigned on Oct 29.

That's quite a lot of "reportedly"s and no word from the city.

Millenium is also leaking a $65-million cost overrun on its 176 unit Evelyn Drive project above Park Royal in West Van and in danger of default on a 170 room hotel contract in Nanaimo. h/t Bill Tieleman

One of Millenium's backers is private-equity and hedge-fund manager Fortress Investment Group.

G&M :

"Donald Trump is tied up in a legal fight over a Chicago skyscraper that is now worth less at completion than the total value of the loans it took to build it.
The shortfall is about $100-million. Interestingly, one of the lenders in this case is Fortress Investment Group, the primary lender in the athletes' village project."

Ross is on the details of this with a half a dozen posts.

Meanwhile, over in the UK :

"Government ministers have delayed a taxpayer bail-out for the £1bn athletes' village at the London 2012 Olympics until the beginning of next year at the earliest.
The scheme hit trouble when the developer Lend Lease could not raise finance and the possible resale value of the flats slumped. Also at the meeting was John Armitt, the Olympic Delivery Authority chairman, who has said taxpayers might have to bail out the entire £1bn cost."

So. Could it happen here?

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Wednesday night update : G&M :

"Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan asked the police Wednesday to investigate the "theft" of documents from city hall that revealed that city council had authorized a loan of up to $100-million to the financially strapped developer of the 2010 Olympics athletes village."

Yeah, Sammy, coz that's the really important issue here.

Will the Canada-EU Free Trade Agreement out-NAFTA NAFTA?

Be careful what you wish for.

Melvin J Howard, CEO of the Arizona-based Centurion Health Corporation, is in the process of filing a NAFTA Chapter 11 complaint against Canada's public healthcare system. Although our government has repeatedly assured us that Canadian healthcare is protected under NAFTA, recent tinkering with P-3s and privatization by the Quebec, BC, and Alberta governments has led Mr. Howard to believe he has a case, as argued on his blog :

1. Canada claims to have exemptions on their public health care system.
2. Canada has registered health insurance at the World Trade Organization as a financial service.
3. The World Trade Organization allows governments to exempt any service provided "in the exercise of government authority," as long as such services are not also available commercially.
4. Canadian private companies are already in the health business in Canada.
5. NAFTA dictates that Canadian, US, and Mexican businesses must have equal opportunities in all three countries.
6. Centurion has been barred from having the same investment opportunities private Canadian companies enjoy because it is based in the US.
7. Enter Chapter 11.

Mr. Howard is claiming $4 million in expenses and an additional $150 million in lost profit after a failed attempt to invest in the BC health care system. Although he has put his claim on hold until after the Canadian election, he states his intention to proceed "after the new Government is installed" if private negotiations with the federal government do not satify him.


Yesterday Red Tory was rather amused at my post on Harper's insistence on keeping his upcoming secret squirrel Canada-EU Free Trade Agreement negotiations out of the public eye till after the election. A "yawning non-story" and a "conspiracy theory", he said, despite the fact that the EU negotiators have already pressured Canada into accepting, as a precondition of their participation, a stipulation "which would require that Canadian governments allow European companies to bid as equals on government contracts for both goods and services and end the favouring of local or national providers of public-sector services."

I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this.
After, say, a company in Liechtenstein wins the bid to run the CBC on a for-profit basis, how long do you think it will take Fox News to file a Chapter 11 complaint at the WTO? An extreme and unlikely scenario to be sure, but I submit it to all of you who take comfort in the idea that a free trade agreement with the EU would naturally provide a much-needed corrective balance to NAFTA and our trade dependence on the U.S. Under the corporate-friendly conditions Canada has unfortunately already agreed to so far in the EU talks, I see no assurance that the balance will necessarily tip in our favour.

And Harper doesn't want to talk about it.

P-3s - Plundering the Public Pocketbook

Vaughn Palmer tells us in The Vancouver Sun that Macquarie Infrastructure Group or MIG, one of the largest toll road companies in the world, is the "main player" in the P-3 bid to build a second span beside the Port Mann Bridge and widen 37kms of the TransCanada Highway :

Vetting will be done by the Ministry of Highways and Partnerships B.C., the provincial agency for overseeing P3s. The process will be scrutinized by an independent fairness adviser, put there to oversee the public interest in equal treatment of all three bidders.

"Oversee the public interest"? That's very amusing, Vaughn.
Does this mean Macquarie is no longer on the Partnerships BC payroll then?

In 2001, Macquarie was asked to write a report about the feasibility of going ahead with RAV as a P3. The verdict was favourable. Subsequently, Macquarie was retained by Partnerships BC to continue to advise it in regard to the commercial and financial aspects of RAV while at the same time, [Macquarie was] bidding on Sea to Sky.

A bid they were successful in securing, I might add - Macquarie is project manager of the Sea to Sky Highway.

Vaughn goes on to say : "The B.C. Liberals are perhaps hoping to avoid the kind of controversy that has dogged one of these players in Texas."

Quite.
According to Manufacturing and Technology News, Macquarie has been recently accused of financing Presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani through a shell law firm. When there was public outcry against the privatization of the public roads in Texas, Macquerie spent $110M buying up 42 local newspapers along the proposed Texas Corridor, also known as the southern end of the NAFTA Superhighway.

From Manufacturing and Technology News, here's how this P-3 scam works south of the border :

"What I think has happened is that "read-my-lips" George Bush Sr. couldn't figure a way to operate government without raising taxes. His son solved the problem by radically increasing the national debt, borrowing primarily from the central banks of other nations.

Now, we have a new generation of Republicans who say I'll cut taxes, and I'll never raise taxes. They intend to finance their promise by selling off the public infrastructure. What the public doesn't understand and what the media is not explaining is that the private operations of our public infrastructure represents the highest tax you can possibly have because those investors are going to run up the prices they charge to the limit and under the binding contracts these "no-new-tax" governors are signing, we have no democratic alternative for dealing with these contracts."

"If you are a governor and you need $3 billion, $4 billion or $5 billion to finance state government and you have a heavily trafficked route, these private companies will come in and pay the state the money and you're all of a sudden flush with cash. They will put together a package and their teams of lawyers will come in to work with you on what you need to do to change your state constitution and change your laws.

If you need to do a referendum, they will help you finance and run the referendum. They'll lobby the state legislature and the local media. To streamline all of this, the U.S. Department of Transportation is working with them state by state on privatizing public roads."

Ask not for whom the road tolls...