From Vive le Canada

Harper Not Just Americanizing, But Abolishing Canada
By Susan Thompson

For all the continuing concern among Canada’s progressives that Harper is Americanizing this country, it’s unfortunate that there has been silence about the fact that if he has his way, this country as we know it will soon no longer exist.

Plans are on track to establish a North American Union (NAU), a new political and economic entity that would take over governance from the existing countries of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. This is the actual end goal of “deep integration”, also known as the “Big Idea” or “Grand Bargain”, as has been made clear in publications from Robert Pastor’s book Toward a North American Community to the Council on Foreign Relations’ trilateral task force report “Building a North American Community”. It doesn’t seem to matter that the Canadian public remains largely unaware of the plan and its consequences. Nor has it been approved by the U.S. Congress; as Republican Congressman Ron Paul has written, “Congressional oversight of what might be one of the most significant developments in recent history is non-existent. Congress has had no role at all in a ‘dialogue’ that many see as a plan for a North American union”. But political elites in all three countries, in partnership with representatives of giant corporations such as Lockheed Martin, have been working hard to keep making headway despite what the public may think.

In fact, unfortunately, most of the battles have already been won. The steps that have led us down the road towards complete integration with the U.S. have been sometimes slow but still steady since U.S. President Ronald Reagan first spoke about a common North American market back in the early 80s. A series of trade agreements, starting with the first FTA and progressing through NAFTA into the new NAFTA-plus (aka the Security and Prosperity Partnership Initiative) have established the framework for union. (Note that according to the U.S. government website dedicated to the project, the SPP is neither a treaty nor a formal agreement; it is a “dialogue”, a dubious distinction which simply seems meant to prevent official debate and discussion of the SPP among the rest of the elected representatives of the three countries.) The leaders are to meet again in Canada in 2007 to discuss progress in this “dialogue”, at Harper’s invitation.

Harper, of course, is not solely to blame. He was the merely the last Canadian Prime Minister to sign on to the plan, issuing a Leaders’ Joint Statement with the U.S. and Mexico in Cancun in March, but every successive Prime Minister since Mulroney has played his part regardless of party affiliation. The sad fact is it hasn’t seemed to matter if we’ve had a Liberal or Conservative PM—all have been just as willing as Mulroney to sing the praises of the U.S. administration, and just as willing to sign away Canadian sovereignty on the latest in a long series of dotted lines. Mulroney kicked things off by signing the original FTA, although he was acting on the advice of a Royal Commission chaired by former Liberal Minister of Finance Donald S. Macdonald. Chretien signed NAFTA without changes despite his Red Book promise to renegotiate the agreement. And Martin fulfilled his role as an “amigo” to the U.S. at the Waco Summit in 2005, signing the Security and Prosperity Partnership Initiative, the foundation for NAFTA-plus and a future North American Union. Harper has only had to pick up where they left off, although there is little doubt he has been more than willing to do so. Nor has it been any different in the U.S., where it hasn’t mattered whether it was Republicans or Democrats in power—every President since Reagan has been on board.

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