The highly uncertain future of North American governance


By Janine Brodie

Janine Brodie is a Canada Research Chair and professor of political science at the University of Alberta


Shortly after Barack Obama’s widely-celebrated electoral victory, Thomas d’Aquino, Chief Executive and President of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE), published an open letter to the president-elect in the National Post. D’Aquino reminded Obama that Canadian and Americans were cousins and that together, in the face of challenging economic times, we must stand firmly against the siren call of protectionism, and recapture the sense of urgency and momentum that had accelerated continental integration in the aftermath of 9/11.

DWINDLING SUPPORT

D’Aquino, together with the influential coalition of North American political and corporate elites that crafted the 2005 Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), a successor agreement to the NAFTA, had many reasons to be apprehensive about the future of North American governance.

The American electorate’s resounding repudiation of the Republican Party left Stephen Harper, recently re-elected with another fragile minority government, as the last-standing poster-boy for unfettered market governance.

Even more disconcerting, during the protracted Democratic primary contest and the U.S. presidential campaign, both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, now Secretary of State, pledged to reopen NAFTA to better protect the environment, American workers, and American jobs.
Perhaps most unsettling, the unfolding crisis in North American capitalism has not only fuelled a growing wave of protectionist sentiment in the United States, which may be partially soothed by a massive “shovel-readyâ€