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February 12, 2008 When the National Post feels strongly about an issue it doesn’t hold back. There were three – count-em, three – op-eds in today’s paper advocating deeper North American integration, including the possibility of a common currency across the continent. The onslaught from Canada’s leading right-wing daily can leave you with one of two impressions: either the Security and Prosperity Partnership truly is going nowhere, as several commentators have recently suggested; or even the people you’d expect to be hard-wired to the process know as little about it as the rest of us. The first op-ed in the Post today was by Michael Hart, a University of Carleton professor and former DFAIT official responsible for advising the government on the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement and NAFTA (and negotiating the failed Multilateral Agreement on Investment). Vehemently pro-integration, Hart echoes the sentiments of Globe and Mail pundits Neil Reynolds and John Ibbitson when he says that “Canada blew it” after 9/11 by not jumping inside of Fortress America. Instead, he argues, Canada allowed the border with the U.S. to become gradually “thicker” to the point where it is hampering trade. The solution, Hart writes, “should include a four-part agenda aimed at removing the border to the largest extent possible as an obstacle to Canada-U.S. interaction and integration,” including an aggressive regulatory harmonization push, joint-security for so-called critical economic infrastructure (i.e. pipelines and highways), and stronger North American political institutions and networks. “The need for a new approach to the Canada-U.S. border has been apparent for more than a decade as the two economies have adapted to the impact of freer trade and the structural and institutional changes of deep integration,” writes Hart. “Progress will be made under the SPP banner, but at a snail's pace and without the impact needed to make a perceptible difference.” A snail’s pace? Regulatory harmonization, a NAFTA priority, has never moved so quickly, with two agreements on the issue – a cooperation framework and chemicals regulation pact – coming out of Montebello last August. You would have to immediately dismantle Environment Canada, Health Canada and all of our other regulatory bodies and adopt U.S. standards to make it move any quicker, which would be fine with Canada’s business community – the people Hart implores to “speak out forcefully and convincingly about the costs and lost opportunities flowing from misdirected and overzealous border administration.” The second, equally angry op-ed comes to us from Terrence Corcoran, a Carleton Journalism School graduate and current editor of the Financial Post. Corcoran, “has been writing on business and economic policy matters for most of the past 35 years, bringing a free-market perspective to Canadian economic and political affairs,” according to his bio. Which kind of means that plugging deep integration, the latest fad of the Canadian business community, is, for Terrence, as natural as waking up every morning. “It is now almost a cliché to hear business and government leaders lament the ‘thickening’ of the border, as if the border issue were comparable to being overweight and something that could be cured with a gimmicky diet or two,” writes Corcoran in an op-ed that nonetheless critiques the inefficiency of U.S. security paranoia, although for its impact on commerce – not on human lives. “The result has been a proliferation of announced schemes – Smart Border Accords, Security and Prosperity Partnerships, Customs-Trade arrangements, Container Security Initiatives, the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, NEXUS travel measures – but little or no real improvement in a border that is becoming a barrier to trade. The border's getting thicker.” The third op-ed in today’s Post, which Corcoran also cross-promotes, summarizes a recent Woodrow Wilson Center report by Gary Hufbauer and Claire Brunel, which claims, “Until Canada decides to adopt the U.S. dollar, formally or informally, and hitch its business cycle more closely to the American rhythm, further integration will confront natural limits.” Before we start screaming “Amero!” the writers add that: “As with everything else in economic life, Canadians have a choice: deeper integration or monetary independence. For the foreseeable future, they will continue to choose monetary independence.” Unfortunately, our government hasn’t given us much of a choice on other issues related to Canadian independence – regulatory harmonization, for instance, or adopting U.S.-style anti-terrorism laws. So why should we expect it to come to us with any plans for a monetary union? These things continue to be foisted onto us by Liberal and Conservative governments unwilling to open up debate on issues like deep integration and the Security and Prosperity Partnership. In fact, our government has consistently shown contempt for our opinion and for democracy in this country. “From an economic standpoint, Canada would benefit from simply adopting large swaths of U.S. regulatory standards, particularly those that are newly issued,” write Hufbauer and Brunel in the Post, using exactly the same arguments that Canada’s business community has been spouting in endless intimate meetings with government officials at SPP Leaders Summits like the one in Montebello last August and the one approaching in New Orleans this April. So is the SPP stalled or is it racing ahead faster than Canada’s pro-integration intellectuals can keep track of? Until we get a more meaningful public debate on these issues, it seems we’re all – free traders and fair traders alike – scrambling in the dark. To read Hufbauer and Brunel’s full report for the Woodrow Wilson Center, click here.
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