Thread: Continental integration talks spark fierce debate in U.S.

Continental integration talks spark fierce debate in U.S.

Kelly Patterson
CanWest News Service


Saturday, February 17, 2007


OTTAWA -- A sweeping accord for the economic integration of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico has unleashed a firestorm of 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 czar Michael Chertoff arrive in Ottawa to meet their Canadian and Mexican counterparts to discuss the accord, in the lead-up 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 watch lists 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 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," said U.S. Department of Commerce spokesman Matt Englehart.

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

"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."

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

"What if you want to sell it to a country we (the U.S.) 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."

Nonetheless, 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 anymore."

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."

Ottawa Citizen


http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/stor ... f3&k=33715

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

"What if you want to sell it to a country we (the U.S.) don't want it sold to?" he asks.

Excellent article. This starts to translate it into Canadian terms for the Canadian people. If they're not so socialized that they've given up thinking that they have any say about their lives......then maybe they will object and speak out.

But heck, except for some outstanding Canadian Patriots, there are a whole lot of people up there who will just smile and say, "Oh!! Good. That sounds good!"

It won't sound so good to them when they realize that the U.S. president is making their decisions for them. And the Mexican one too!! But by the time they notice it'll be too late.

Without meaning to put them down, I just think that the Canadians are going to go right along with the plan. I hope that I'm wrong.

but Diane Feinstein knows nothing about any such plans, right! They are selling us out for a buck.

Excellent article. This starts to translate it into Canadian terms for the Canadian people. If they're not so socialized that they've given up thinking that they have any say about their lives......then maybe they will object and speak out.

Your very right about Canadians needing to pay attention, the American economy would eat them for lunch and demand even more.

Mexico would continue being the leach they always have been.

Imagine three tanks of water connected with pipes.
The Canadians have nice clean self sufficient water, the Americans have plenty of water but boy is it ever loaded with avarice and the Mexicans have some water that's muddy and owned by the Mafia rich.

Now open all the spigots so the tanks can equalize.

What does logic tell you will happen?

Your very right about Canadians needing to pay attention, the American economy would eat them for lunch and demand even more.

Again, I don't mean to insult our Canadian friends, and especially the ones who are like us in their patriotism towards their country, and there are some....I hope many......but Sovereign, I'm under the impression that a lot of Canadians would allow any country to have their country's entire sovereignty for lunch, I think they'd offer their economy as just the appetizer.

I hope I'm wrong.

I am really not trying to be insulting to them, I just think that Socialism really turns the people into becoming very submissive and accepting. They might very well see the NAU as a new "benefit" and our leaders will do a good job of presenting it to them as such. They try to present it to us like that, but we refuse to buy into their propaganda.

What do y'all think?

To us I think it does seem that way, but I think there's more fight in them than might appear on the surface.

Although, Canada follows the Euro Multi-Culti socialist mold that Europe has literal given into and that does not bode well.

Which will be dominant in our future, the communists from Latin America or the Sharia law Jihadis now moving into Canada in droves and later here?

What we're going through right now needs to be no only a wake up call for the present but the future.

Sovereign wrote:

Imagine three tanks of water connected with pipes.
The Canadians have nice clean self sufficient water, the Americans have plenty of water but boy is it ever loaded with avarice and the Mexicans have some water that's muddy and owned by the Mafia rich.

Now open all the spigots so the tanks can equalize.

What does logic tell you will happen?

Yikes! not a pretty picture!

Well, Sovereign, I hope they have it in them. I really do.

Look at the French Canadians, they don't even want to be part of Canada, much less the North American Union! If the government in Ottawa pushes hard to join the NAU, for sure Quebec will declare it's independence.

Also don't forget up until the war of 1812 Americans and Canadians were fightning each other. It almost started up again in 1850 over which country should control British Columbia but that was resolved diplomatically without another war.

The Canadians won't join the NAU without some type of fight.