Looking south

North American leaders discuss security, prosperity and Mexican labour for Canada's oil sands

Macleans.ca staff | Feb 24, 2007 | 7:01 pm EST

While high-level officials from Canada, the United States and Mexico yesterday, 30 CEOs from the North American Competitiveness Council (NACC) were recommending that Canada accelerate its efforts to recruit Mexican workers to alleviate labour shortages in the country’s oil patch.
The executives tabled a 63-page report in Ottawa today at a meeting of high-level politicians from Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, where they were discussing the North American Security and Prosperity Partnership launched in 2005.

The NACC report was expected to include a recommendation to facilitate the importing of Mexican labour, which they argue will benefit Mexico by providing its workers with the necessary skills for the country to develop its own energy sector.

The report's 51 recommendations focused on three "priority areas" - facilitation of border crossings, cooperation on regulations and standards, and the supply and distribution of energy, including the recruitment of Mexican workers.

Established during the last round of high-level SPP meetings, held in Mexico in March 2006, between Prime Minister Stephen Harper, U.S. President George W. Bush and then-Mexican President Vincente Fox, the NACC's mission is "to collect guidance from the private sector" on the goals of the security partnership.

Officials in attendance at the meeting Friday included US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and secretary of homeland security Michael Chertoff, and Mexican secretary of foreign affairs Patricia Espinosa Cantellano - along with foreign affairs minister Peter MacKay and public safety minister Stockwell Day.

Other issues expected to be discussed included new American passport requirements and Maher Arar's continuing presence on American no-fly lists. Rice and MacKay fielded a question on the latter at a post-meeting press conference, stressing that it was simply one of many issues on which their two countries "agree to disagree."

The officials offered few specifics about the substance of their meetings. Rice said they touched on a wide range of issues, including public health, environmental threats, natural disasters, organized crime, drug trafficking and reserves of clean energy.

"We want to see an enhancement . . . in terms of prosperity and security and we also want to see the quality of life for our citizens in each of our own sovereign nations to increase," Day said.

The SPP is aimed at forming a basis for continental co-operation in the defence against terrorism and creating an economic bloc to rival the burgeoning markets of China and India.

The partnership has been decried by politicians and nationalist groups in both Canada and the U.S. as too secretive and a potential threat to sovereignty. Critics say there should be more public input and legislative oversight on big issues such as the integration of North American energy markets.

http://www.macleans.ca/canada/national/ ... 5255_12240

This is reprehensible!!!