Thread: North American Union Plan Under Fire

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'North American Union' plan under fire
Americans fear their borders and sovereignty will dissolve

Published: Saturday, February 17, 2007
A sweeping accord for the economic integration of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico has unleashed a stormy debate south of the border.

Everyone from national congressmen and state legislators to bloggers and YouTubers are raising the alarm about the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), a plan to harmonize the countries' economic and security practices.

Criticism ranges from measured calls for stronger congressional oversight to hysterical charges that the "treasonous" deal will flood the U.S. with illegal aliens and terrorists.

"The deal will weaken the sovereignty of the U.S. It will create a North American Union" similar to the European model, warns Representative Virgil Goode, who, along with six other legislators, has tabled two resolutions opposing the deal in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Canada will be in the eye of the storm next Friday as U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff arrive in Ottawa to meet their Canadian and Mexican counterparts to discuss the accord, in the leadup to a summit of the heads of state in Alberta this June.

The wide-ranging accord lays the tracks for the harmonization of everything from immigration screening and terrorist watchlists to drug-safety and consumer-protection regulations.

The SPP aims "to build a safer, more secure and economically dynamic North America," says Melisa Leclerc, spokeswoman for Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day.

But critics argue that the pact, brokered by U.S. President George W. Bush, then-prime minister Paul Martin and Mexican leader Vicente Fox in 2005, amounts to a set of backroom deals that bypass the democratic channels of all three countries to avoid opposition.

Many of the accord's 300-some initiatives affect regulatory issues such as visa-screening rules that are under the control of bureaucrats rather than legislators.

Since January, legislators in six states have tabled resolutions opposing the plan.

"A merger between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico would be a direct threat to the national independence of the U.S. and an eventual end to national borders," says Val Stevens, a Washington state senator who recently filed a resolution opposing the pact.

Officials on both sides of the border strongly deny the charges that they're engineering a North American Union.

"All three governments are sovereign democracies, and the SPP work is the kind of standard intergovernmental diplomacy and co-ordination that occurs all the time on various issues," says U.S. Department of Commerce spokesman Matt Englehart.

Any steps that would require legal changes will be vetted by Congress, Mr. Englehart adds.

The pact aims simply to "promote the safe and efficient movement of people and goods" among the three trading partners, he says.

"That's nice government bureaucratese," scoffs Jerome Corsi, an author and outspoken critic of the pact, pointing to the sheer scale of the project, which involves scores of officials in all three countries.

"You don't need trilateral working groups that report directly to three cabinet secretaries, the National Security Council and the president" to do housekeeping tasks such as cleaning up Lake Erie, he says.
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'North American Union' plan under fire

Published: Saturday, February 17, 2007
"The SPP puts in place an elaborate, robust structure" that "will be permanent, and will ultimately ... produce a new set of North American regulations that would supersede any regulations we have in Canada and the U.S."

Mr. Corsi says Canadians should be concerned by this too, noting that some SPP documents refer to the Alberta oil sands "not as a Canadian resource, but as a North American resource."

"What if you want to sell it to a country we don't want it sold to?" he asks.

But Robert Pastor, director of the Center of North American Studies at American University and an influential proponent of economic integration, says the SPP is no threat to sovereignty.

"The idea of a North American Union is impossible.... There's no way these national governments are going to be dissolved," he says, noting that the relationships among the three nations are very different from those in Europe.

"But we would be making a huge mistake we didn't learn from five decades of European (economic) integration.

"We're better off the more we communicate with each other and work together."

But John McManus, president of the patriotic John Birch Society, says the European Union, which began with a common market and regulatory harmonization, has all but wiped out national identity on the continent.

"Last month Roman Herzog, German president from 1994 to 1999, said 84 per cent of the legal acts in Germany stem from European Union headquarters in Brussels.

"Then he asked whether Germany can still unreservedly be called a parliamentary democracy any more."

The Security and Prosperity Partnership is the "beginning of the end of independence," he concludes.

"I would think Canadians want to stay Canadians, and here in America we want to stay American."

© The Ottawa Citizen 2007

I am declaring ...tonight...That the North American Union......IS FIRED!!!!!!!Please escort them all off the property of America...and have them all turn in their American Name Badges and other identification...
Thank you,
Queen for the DAY...
Come on Folks we have a Country to run here... back to work!

If you were the Queen of hearts you would be screaming OFF WITH THEIR CABEZA'S (I think that's how you say heads in Spanish, correct me if I'm wrong)

Anyway, I agree. They should be fired, one and all!

CC,
I think I should have not drank coffee tonight...
if I where the Queen of Hearts...They would be in soooo much trouble
or
If I where the wicked witch of the west...I would be writing in the sky.... "SURRENDER JOHNNY SUTTON." and flying Monkeys would be bringing me the dope dealer

I hear you redbadger. How about a good old fashion VOODOO Curse?!! I'm having too much fun with this thread!!

Surrender Johnny

Ohhh!!! Scarry Wizard of Oz witch avatar redbadger! NICE Turn them into toads!