Remember all the good that has come from the North American Free Trade Agreement? Billions of dollars in lost tax revenue to US trade interests? Remember those fun times? Remember how it’s all still happening right now but the news media isn’t very interested for some reason?
Also receiving shockingly little media attention is a proposal already well under way to becoming law that will go ten steps further in erasing what’s left of our national identity. Bush’s administration is heavily pushing the SPP, the Security and Prosperity Partnership (of North America). In a convenient soundbite this means that all security and trade controls are harmonized from Mexico to Canada. And by harmonized we mean Americanized.
First there’s what would happen to our oil. Canada is a net exporter. The US and Mexico are both net importers. They can’t produce nearly as much as they demand. Right there we should be extremely cautious about buddying up to an oil-sucking behemoth like Yankee-town. As Gordon Laxer points out, we have no plan in place to secure our own requirements, and further- NAFTA has a clause that guarantees proportionality. We aren’t allowed to secure our own needs first. Sure, that’s great incentive to underwrite all sorts of alternative energy research, but it’s been thirty years since it’s been really necessary to have a combustion engine on the road. If oil companies continue to blockade research and production of electric and hydrogen fuel cells as they have for the past thirty years, what sort of sudden enlightenment do you think they’ll have now?
Vancouver journalist Murray Dobbin explores the ramifications of the SPP in his examination of TILMA, the Trade, Investment, and Labour Mobility Agreement pushed (and passed) by conservative BC Premier Campbell and notoriously Conservative Canadian Prime Minister Harper. Originally the agreement was marketed as a means to bolster business development in BC and Alberta, two provinces expanding at a fabulous rate but with sudden unmet employment needs. We need workers. It was soon obvious that the agreement was being pushed nationally, and whether it was their intention or not this meant the way was further paved for international agreement. Harmonization. Deregulation. Americanization.
“When fully implemented, TILMA would allow legal challenges to the location and size of commercial signs, environmental set-backs for developers, zoning, building height restrictions, pesticide bans, and green space requirements in urban areas.
It also could allow challenges to restrictions on private health clinics, halt stricter rules for nursing homes and almost certainly overturn the current ban on junk food in B.C. schools.
With respect to the environment, regulations regarding air quality are at risk, as are restrictions on tourist developments, the establishment of ecological reserves, the Agricultural Land Reserves and the authority of the Islands Trusts.
There are exceptions to the agreement and a list of legitimate “objectives” that governments can try to protect. But even here, they have to prove to an independent dispute panel that the objective was met with the least possible restriction to business — a very tough challenge.”
This bizarre systematic destruction of everything that makes Canada socially superior to the States began in 2005, under Paul Martin’s administration, as something called ‘deep integration’, a program specifically designed to out-EU the European Union, at the expense of Canadian identity and financial independence. As Murray Dobbin puts it, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. For some reason, press coverage of this event in Waco, Texas, was… minor. By all accounts, this program has passed legislation. It’s in place. It’s happening. It’s happened.
The third meeting of the leaders of our three nations to discuss SPP, this apparently foregone conclusion, happens August 20th in Quebec. Protests are being organized. I will certainly be there in spirit.
Maybe you can tell me how this deal could possibly do us any good. I haven’t a clue how a homogenized North America (which you know damn well would simply be America) could be a Good Thing. The American legal and capital systems are broken, serving only those who can afford it. Mexico stands to benefit by vastly relaxed border controls. Where does Canada benefit?
This may or may not be of interest. It is the back inside cover (I think) of Maxx Barry’s book “Jennifer Government” – first published in January 2003. It’s a social satire that pitched America into the future some few or few hundred years (never says, to my recollection) where employees take the surname of the company they work for and the police can be subcontracted to build street cred by killing customers. It was a great book and every day we seem closer to having it as reality.
I realize that, in general, telling you about this book has nothing to do with what you’ve posted about. What I meant to do was segue into sharing this link with you:
The Map As the USA Would Like To Know It.
Interesting post. So what can be done at this point? The elections have long come and gone..
ping