By Stuart Trew
The continentalists are out of the cupboard: The United States and Canada are taking another crack at North American integration, this time without Mexico. Civil servants are dusting off their policy playbooks, business lobbyists are flexing their muscles, and politicians are sexing up their communications strategies. Their opponents, activists fighting for a new economic model, are preparing a counteroffensive that we hope will succeed — again.
Earlier this year, U.S. President Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper jointly announced they would be restarting NAFTA-plus regulatory and security cooperation discussions, labeling the talks “Beyond the Border.” It marked the rebirth of the failed Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) — leaving the increasingly complicated relation between the United States and Mexico on its own. Controversially, Canada is now talking about a “perimeter” approach for North American security — a term that past Liberal governments had avoided using. The Beyond the Border working group, made up of senior foreign affairs and public safety bureaucrats, has already finished consulting business and corporate lobby groups — with only token labor outreach. The two governments are planning to release a Beyond the Border action plan this summer.
The perimeter plan will likely have the same economic and security flaws as the SPP and other failed NAFTA expansion packs. Efforts to more closely integrate the U.S. and Canadian economies and surveillance infrastructures will not create jobs or actually make anyone safer. Beyond the Border does, however, pose threats to our privacy, democratic sovereignty, and economic options for the future. Canada and the United States have agreed to deploy “common technical standards for the collection, transmission, and matching of biometrics that enable the sharing of information on travelers in real time.” But the privacy implications of using biometrics in travel documents, not to mention outstanding questions of their efficacy, fuel ongoing debates on both sides of the border.
full article http://www.fpif.org/articles/a_new_perimeter_to_expand_nafta
Stumble It!
North American union is similar to the proposal of NDP-Liberal merger, a sinkling ship( the US ) desperately grasping at the one floating, to try, vainly, to survive, while simply causing both to sink.
As Uncle Sam would say "We should join forces, to decide what we are going to do with "OUR" resources." Canada should reply " What do you mean "WE" white man?"
NDP leaders have always opposed free trade deals with the US. If we get the gun registry issue out of the way by the next eelction, the NDP can pick up the support from many Canadians, especially rural ones, and get the majority it needs to reassert Canadian sovereignty.
What makes you so certain that rural Canadians would oppose free trade, or support a party that does?
Because rural Canucks can see firsthand the catastrophe that NAFTA has wrought. City folks are insular, and can only see as far as their noses.