Vive Le Canada

Security and Prosperity Partnership page
Date: Thursday, July 14 2005
Topic: Canadian Activism


The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, the agreement to harmonize Canadian, U.S. and Mexican regulations, security, etc., has an "official" website: www.spp.gov. I have added it to our FAQ entry on the agreement but you may want to check it out as well. Note that the American flag is the only graphic on the site.


Interestingly, however, the website also offers a comment form. They are obviously expecting business groups to write in with suggestions on how best to integrate our economies, since the intro in the working groups section is as follows:
"We are interested in your recommendations and views on ways to cut red tape and eliminate unnecessary barriers to trade in the areas covered by the working groups. Please use the SPP Comment Form if you would like to submit comments to any one of these groups." The actual comment form also warns: "Please note that all comments are subject to the Freedom of Information Act which means that interested parties could ask to see all of the comments. You should exercise prudence in regards to sharing business confidential information."




But this got me thinking, because anyone could easily use this comment form to send comments to the working groups. So maybe it would be an effective action to ask people to submit comments opposing deep integration. In fact, Rev Blair's tongue-in-cheek column about the supposed "race to the top" that would happen under deep integration (as opposed to the race to the bottom most of us believe is more realistic) could provide a great inspiration for comments. For eg, Vive activists could write and say "I recommend that you cut red tape by instituting universal health care in the U.S., because this would save companies from having to cope with the huge amount of red tape related to private health insurance and the rising costs of such insurance, as evidenced by GM's recent announcement that they had to institute lay-offs due to these issues."


Or "I recommend that the U.S. ratify the Kyoto Protocol, as ratified by both Canada and Mexico, because it gives the U.S. an unfair economic advantage by allowing only U.S. corporations to produce greenhouse gases with impunity."


Kind of a similar idea to the documentary the Yes Men, if you've ever seen it, in that we'd be subverting their process by pretending to sympathize.


Thoughts? Anyone game? SPP comment form




[Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on July 14, 2005]

www.spp.gov our FAQ entry on the ag... comment form tongue-in-cheek column SPP comment form



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