Continental integration ‘by stealth’ plotted (Frances Russell)
Winnipeg Free Press Wed Apr 11 2007
THE Battle of Vimy Ridge, 90 years ago this month, caused the deaths of 3,598 Canadian boys and men. It made us a country. It freed us from imperial domination. Last September, the crème de la crème of North American political and corporate power gathered at the posh Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel to plan the political, military and economic integration of North America — using “evolution by stealth” if necessary.
The publics of the three countries — Canada, the U.S. and Mexico — were not invited. The guest list was secret. The sessions were in camera.
According to documents obtained under U.S. Freedom of Information, the North American Forum’s guest list included then-U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Canada’s Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day, Canadian Chief of Defence Staff Rick Hillier, former U.S. energy and defence secretary James Schlesinger, U.S. National Security Council senior director Dan Fisk, U.S. Deputy Energy Secretary Clay Sell, Sharon Murphy of Chevron Canada, Canadian Council of Chief Executives president Tom D’Aquino, Roger Gibbins of the Canada West Foundation, R. James Woolsey of Booz Allen Hamilton and Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters president Perrin Beatty.
Forum co-chairs were former Alberta premier Peter Lougheed, and George Schultz, U.S. secretary of state under Ronald Reagan.
Presentation outlines acknowledge that North American integration is unpopular. “While a vision is appealing, working on the infrastructure might yield more benefit and bring more people on board (’evolution by stealth’),” the documents, obtained by The Ottawa Citizen, say. Proceeding by regulation rather than legislation avoids public debate.
The North American Security and Prosperity Partnership, and its companion North American Competitiveness Council, were launched by U.S. President George Bush, then-prime minister Paul Martin and former Mexican president Vincente Fox at their 2005 Waco, Texas, summit and subsequently reinforced at the 2006 Cancun, Mexico, summit with Stephen Harper as prime minister. One week before Waco, the powerful U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, the Canadian Council of Chief Executives and the Consejo Mexicano de Asuntos Internaticionales released the blueprint for North American deep integration. Their task force report was entitled Building a North American Community.
The report’s proposals will effectively turn North America into a new European Economic Community, except for one important detail. The North American Economic Community, unlike the EEC, will have no democratic, representative and accountable structures and institutions.
Elite
Instead, the NAEC will operate by corporate-government elite accommodation. “Eminent persons… appointed to staggered multi-year terms” and “private bodies” will “buttress North American relationships, along the lines of the Bilderberg or Wehrekunde conferences.”
The report leaves little doubt that U.S. laws, forms and regulations will govern the new super state, setting the rules on everything from immigration, counter-terrorism and border security to energy and resource exploitation and the harmonization of food and drug safety standards.
This means that, with the obvious exceptions of the military, anti-terrorism, immigration and border security, the less government the better.
The section recommending the development of a North American “resource accord” pointedly notes that “both Canada and Mexico have the potential to develop growing supplies” of oil and gas but suffer from too much government regulation and interference. The report waxes euphoric about “Canada’s vast oilsands” that “have catapulted Canada into second place in the world of proved oil reserves,” but complains about the “constraint” of “regulatory approval processes that can slow down both resource and infrastructure development significantly.”
Green the task force is not. It utters not one word about the mounting environmental cost of the oilsands, from their staggering greenhouse gas emissions to their equally staggering demands on scarce water and natural gas supplies.
The task force is also harsh about Mexico’s insistence on public ownership of its oil. “This restriction on investment, coupled with the inefficient management of the state monopoly, Pemex, has contributed to low productivity,” the report continues.
The task force seeks “a seamless North American market for trade,” a “common external tariff” and the inclusion of all sectors now excluded from the North American Free Trade Agreement. That means the end of protection for Canadian culture.
It wants “open skies and open roads,” a “tested once” rule for biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, the end of all regulatory differences “as quickly as possible” and the complete integration of food, health and environmental protection.
Not content with revolutionizing North America’s governance, the task force aims to refashion public consciousness to encourage people to think of themselves, not as Canadians and Mexicans, but as “North Americans.”
“Foundations and research institutes can shape the way public and private institutions engage in a new concept such as a North American community… We encourage foundations and research institutes to provide support and research for addressing continental issues and developing curricula that would permit citizens of our three countries to look at each other in different ways than the past.”
First the decisions in secret. Then the propaganda.
As the two summits and the Banff forum attest, this is Canada’s future — whether we like it or not. It is not what the dead, wounded and scarred-for-life soldiers of Vimy Ridge had in mind when they made their supreme sacrifice in April 1917.