Winnipeg Free Press June 18, 2008

Deputy Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff is thinking the unthinkable; saying the unsayable. He’s publicly questioning Canada’s energy policy; or more accurately, its complete lack of one. Ignatieff compared a national oil pipeline in the 21st century to the national railway in the 19th. The railway was ridiculed in its day as economic madness. “But without it, we wouldn’t have a country… I look at the east-west linkages that tie our country together,” he told Globe and Mail columnist Lawrence Martin, “and I do wonder whether they are strong enough to offset the north-south flows that dominate our economy. The oil, the natural gas, the hydro — it all flows south. Where is the national grid to share our power, the east-west pipeline to share our oil and to guarantee our energy security as a nation?” (Keep reading…)

Rabble.ca March 13, 2008

On March 5 – the day after the Ohio Democratic primary in which the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was such a vote determining issue – activists, legislators and academics from Mexico, the U.S. and Canada gathered at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington D.C. to take a critical look at NAFTA and the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) and what might be done about them. (Keep reading…)

Globe and Mail
March 7, 2008

What’s with the NAFTA panic attacks some Canadians are having? They can’t really believe the Americans would pull out of their big trade deal with us and Mexico. Maybe it’s strategy on their part, like that trickster Brer Rabbit. Brer Fox traps Brer Rabbit and is carrying him to the cook pot. “Do anything to me,” pleads the rabbit, “but don’t throw me into the briar patch.” So the fox does. But don’t throw us out of the NAFTA patch. Right. If only. (Keep reading…)

Globe and Mail Update March 5, 2008

In the aftermath of Barack Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s threats to “renegotiate” NAFTA — or pull out — the usual suspects have been activated to tell the world how wonderful the deal has been for Canada and the United States. (Keep reading…)

Winnipeg Free Press March 5, 2008

Canadians and Mexicans should pressure their governments to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement — Canadians to regain control over energy and Mexicans to regain control over agricultural land. (Keep reading…)

The Nation August 27, 2007

When completed, the highway will run from Mexico City to Toronto, slicing through the heartland like a dagger sunk into a heifer at the loins and pulled clean to the throat. It will be four football fields wide, an expansive gully of concrete, noise and exhaust, swelled with cars, trucks, trains and pipelines carrying water, wires and God knows what else. Through towns large and small it will run, plowing under family farms, subdevelopments, acres of wilderness. Equipped with high-tech electronic customs monitors, freight from China, offloaded into nonunionized Mexican ports, will travel north, crossing the border with nary a speed bump, bound for Kansas City, where the cheap goods manufactured in booming Far East factories will embark on the final leg of their journey into the nation’s Wal-Marts. (Keep reading…)

A Blog of the Progressive Economics Forum 14 Jun 2007

The Globe’s story, Canada Post NAFTA win sets precedent, for UPS vs the government of Canada with respect to Canada Post, is a bit misleading. It comes across as “see, those whiners about investor-state were wrong all along”: (Keep reading…)

Foreign Policy In Focus May 27, 2007 http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4254

The North American Free Trade Agreement is the world’s most advanced example of the U.S.-led free trade model. It’s not just about economics any more. The expansion of NAFTA into the Security and Prosperity Partnership reveals the road ahead for other nations entering into free trade agreements. It is not a road most nations – or the U.S. public — would take if they knew where it led. (Keep reading…)

SPECIAL TO CANADIAN DIMENSION, 5 May 2007

NAFTA from Below is an important book. The full impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement on the working people of Mexico, the U.S. and Canada has yet to be assessed, but this slender volume makes a major contribution to our overall understanding of this disastrous economic treaty that was imposed on the people of all three nations by governments which routinely subvert democracy in the service of big capital. (Keep reading…)

Council of Canadians December 19, 2006

“Canadians should be aware of the role of trade liberalization in Mexico’s political unrest,” says Carleen Pickard, the Council of Canadians’ regional organizer for British Columbia. The Canadian activist has just retuned from Oaxaca where she acted as a human rights observer in the civil conflict that unfolded from December 1-8. (Keep reading…)