Deep Integration And The New North American Man.

The exclusion of the general public from this historical debate is not a conspiracy. It's merely a reflection of how the real power lies outside of Canada, in Corporate-Occupied Washington. And the media don't talk much about it because they are part of the same corporate system. Why further rile an angry public who want less  to do with the New America. 

Nor is it John Manley himself who is uniquely important to deliver the goods to Washington. Like Brian Mulroney before him, he merely represents a constituency. And while Manley's group will only make recommendations, it will have the ear of the governments of Canada, Mexico and the United States. The Task Force for the Future of North America (TFFNA) cannot be ignored. 

The TFFNA is a pet project of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Membership in the CFR is “restricted to U.S. citizens” who come mainly from the corporate or political world, and others who share their view.

According to its website, the CFR’s mandate is to spread its gospel so that interested parties “can better understand the world and the foreign policy choices facing the United States and other governments.”

In other words, they offer free advice on imperial management.

The TFFNA is an ambitious project, and somewhat unique for the CFR in that “unlike other Council-sponsored task forces, which focus primarily on U.S. policy, this initiative includes participants from Canada and Mexico, as well as the United States, and will make policy recommendations for all three countries.”

Policy recommendations that, if implemented, will finally kill-off the meager amount of political sovereignty that remains in Canada after years of corporate-driven, NAFTA-rule.

The push for Deep Integration, a.k.a NAFTA-plus, has so far mainly come from the corporate community in Canada, the think tanks on their payroll, and their cheerleaders in academia. The TTFNA is different. It is the mother-of-all continentalist projects, a who’s who of power and influence, from all three countries, hammering-out a collective vision for a corporate super-state they hope will rival a rising China and a rejuvenated Europe. 

A recently leaked but barely-covered (of the so-called national papers, only the Toronto Star ran it) confidential summary of the TFFNA’s first meeting lays out the short and long term “integration” goals for North America. Honest people would call these suggestions what they are: a roadmap for full and formal control of the neighbours and their resources by the United States. To call it “integration” is misleading. It conjures up images of a European-style continental integration with several bigger partners and wiggle-room for smaller powers. North America, however, consists of a superpower and two much weaker neighbours. If there is a comparison to Europe, it’s when Germany and Austria “integrated” in 1938.  What is being sought is “anschluss American-style”, and it needs to be exposed for what it is, so that it can be stopped. 

In short, Deep Integration is a process aimed at securing and strengthening the economic center of the US Empire, locking-in past gains and cracking-open new opportunities for corporate penetration into areas previously protected for the public good. Here is what the corporate-state leaders want from their immediate neighbours. They want control of everything that they don’t already control through NAFTA, like Canada’s water and Mexico’s oil. They want to further integrate the military command structure of Canada and Mexico into US power. Using “security concerns” due to the never-ending, so-called “War on Terror” as an all-encompassing excuse, they want to harmonize immigration and foreign policy. 

Make no mistake about it; Canada's current level of economic integration is unacceptable to a post 9-11 Washington. Another large attack, when it comes, will produce calls for a garrison state that cannot and will not be ignored. So the choice is really between Deep Integration and Deep Independence. If some future attacker has any connection to Canada whatsoever, Canada will be blamed. Border security politics will blot out everything else. And because investors and corporations see it as “extremely costly to all three countries”, the planners are counting on an unwillingness to return to a pre-NAFTA reality.  

But wait. Why would regular Canadians and Mexicans want to transfer their remaining autonomy to the USA? And isn’t it a little untimely to be holding discussions about deepening ties when America has spent the last four years descending into something that looks like fascism? Where the citizens re-elect a war criminal President and don’t seem to care about the killing of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis in an unjustified and illegal war? Where reports of torture illicit little outrage yet suggestions of same-sex marriage provoke hysteria?

Brand USA is at an all-time global low. And that is why the TFFNA wants to keep the focus on the integration of the North American continent instead of the disintegration of the Canadian State. 

Which creates a little dilemma.

There is no such thing as a shared identity in North America like that which exists in Europe and Asia, to counterbalance the loss of national identity that integration inevitably brings. The planners acknowledge this and suggest manufacturing a North American brand, using the mass media and education systems to sell a previously non-existent shared history and identity. 

They even suggest a North American passport. This would accomplish the extra goal of harmonizing a mandatory domestic identification program with a single standard for all three countries. This identification would be for internal use only, more like the Soviet Union than Europe. 

Task Force members know these things will be a tough sell but they are confident that if they remain patient, and keep pushing, they will prevail. Instead of mentioning public resistance, they refer to “serious obstacles” and concede that “contentious or intractable issues will take more time to ripen politically.”

To be sure, elite sectors of Canada and Mexico have no objection, and will gleefully promote and participate in the annihilation of their own countries. After all, there are plenty of John Manleys around. But there are far more citizens who actually want less America, not more.

The decision to stay out of Iraq was wildly popular in both Mexico and Canada. America might be in a rightward drift, but it is progressive forces to her north and south that are on the march.  And other states in the neighbourhood are celebrating a renewed sense of independence and hopefulness. Defiant symbols like Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Brazilian President Lula da Silva are energizing other nationalist political forces in the region. 

In spite of a clear divergence in values between majorities in Canada and the USA, the Canadian public still makes a clear distinction between its dislike of American policy and its fondness for Americans in general. But just because you like your neighbour does not mean you want to move in with him.

When the TFFNA completes its work, and presents it conclusions, John Manley can count on kid-glove treatment from the media. The “suggestions” he presents will be sold as a cure when they are really just more of the disease. Organized political opposition to the destruction of Canada must emerge and push back.

Clearly, this is much bigger than the political goals of one man, and it is unimportant whether it is Manley or someone else who delivers the goods. Someone will emerge to finish off what  Brian Mulroney started, and if he fails, another will surely pop-up. As long as the moment is here, the man will appear. It is up to those who care about Canada's survival to change the moment, to inform and encourage the citizens to awaken and stop the destruction of their national political space and their popular sovereignty. And when the John Manleys can no longer suggest destroying the country in order to save it, without destroying their political careers, we will know that the time for a more independent Canada has arrived. 

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