INTEGRATE THIS! Challenging the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America

Dispatches from The People’s Summit: Challenging NAFTA
and the SPP in New Orleans, April 21-22, 2008

A groundbreaking Council of Canadians poll shows conclusively that an overwhelming majority of Canadians disagree with the main policy objectives of the SPP.

Click here to read our report, Not Counting Canadians: The Security and Prosperity Partnership and public opinion
Click here for more information and contact details for the People’s Summit.

SPP in the news:

Three NAFTA leaders sit in for the last time
CounterPunch, April 30, 2008 » Read the article

Bush pushes free trade
The Advocate, April 22, 2008 » Read the article

SPP/NAFTA boosters on the defensive in New Orleans
Rabble.ca, April 28, 2008 » Read the article

3 leaders advised by members of business elite
The Times-Picayune, April 23, 2008 » Read the article

Amigos' summits are wearing thin
Toronto Star, April 23, 2008 » Read the article

Business group sets and gets its agenda
Toronto Star, April 23, 2008 » Read the article

'Three amigos' defend NAFTA at annual summit amid criticism on U.S. presidential campaign trail
Toronto Star, Apr 22, 2008 » Read the article

Bush voices NAFTA support amid Democratic criticism
Globe and Mail, Apr 22, 2008 » Read the article

Bush, Harper, Calderon Defend Trade Amid Backlash
Bloomberg, Apr 21, 2008 » Read the article

The media and business consensus following last week’s Security and Prosperity Partnership summit in New Orleans is that the trilateral meeting didn’t produce anything significant. While this is partly correct – no new initiatives were announced – the ones we’re stuck with are bad enough. And while we learned a few new things about the SPP’s progress since Montebello, very few of the details ended up in the news. (more...)

Oh what a depressing summit this was for the North American Competitiveness Council. Like last August, the all-corporate advisory body to the SPP has just tabled a "report to leaders" outlining its hopes and dreams for continental integration in 2008. Unlike last year, there's nothing new in this one beyond a sense of desperation that, for all the CEOs have achieved in public policy setting, the SPP's days are numbered. (more...)

Highlights from the 'Joint Statement by President Bush, President Calderon, Prime Minister Harper'. (more...)

Standing on old concrete foundations buried in overgrowth, it was hard to believe the expanses of green dotted with unused houses used to be a thriving community. But that was before Hurricane Katrina hit in the summer of 2005. Reconstruction in the Lower Ninth Ward has been slow to non-existent. (more...)

As barricades went up in parts of New Orleans' business district yesterday to protect the SPP meeting from scrutiny, two very different meetings were taking place close by. (more...)

We saw it coming but now it looks conclusive: Canada's deep integration nuts are working on a post-SPP agreement that will strike Mexico out of the equation. (more...)

Amnesty International has sent Prime Minister Harper and his U.S. and Mexican counterparts a letter condemning the secrecy behind the SPP and demanding that it be brought to each country's respective legislatures “to facilitate meaningful public debate.” (more...)

Integrate This! is about challenging the Security and ProsperityPartnership of North America (SPP), an executive-level pact between the governments and corporate sectors of Canada, the United States and Mexico, which has never been debated publicly or voted on in any of the three countries. There are over 300 initiatives in the SPP aimed at harmonizing North American policies on food, drugs, security, immigration, refugees, manufacturing, the environment and public health.

But media reports often fail to link regulatory changes designed to move the SPP forward back to the broader goal of continental economic and security integration. The goal of the Integrate This! website is to make those links. As well as regular SPP updates, the site is full of reports, interviews and multimedia presentations critical of what's often called the "deep integration" of North America. News updates will be posted here regularly and archived into the seven categories on the left. The site is updated regularly so visit often, or sign up for regular updates above.

Photo: Council delivers 10,000 Stop the SPP petitions during the August 2007 Montebello Leaders' Summit.
Credit: Christina Riley

Since the story broke this February that the Canadian Forces had signed a troop-sharing agreement with the U.S. army for cross-border disasters and other incidents, Canadians have been asking questions of the government but getting little information in response. (more...)

Industry Minister Jim Prentice will table a new copyright law at the end of the month that is expected to ape what critics call overly restrictive U.S. intellectual property policy. While the rule changes have been in the pipes since the Paul Martin Liberal days, the industry push to have them enacted has only strengthened with the Security and Prosperity Partnership. (more...)

The Natural Resources Defense Council sent a letter to U.S. Senators this week urging them to oppose amendments to the 2008 National Defense Authorization Bill that would repeal a major environmental initiative to ban the purchase of dirty fuel from sources like Alberta’s tar sands. (more...)

The following op-ed by Brent Patterson, director of campaigns and organizing with the Council of Canadians, appeared in today’s Windsor Star: (more...)

A key initiative within the Security and Prosperity Partnership calls for the, "Identification and appropriate adoption of best practices in maintaining the safety, efficacy and quality of pharmaceutical products." (more...)

While Canada has its own bad security deals with the United States – joint no-fly lists, common biometric ID cards, cooperation with a draconian detention and deportation system for migrants – U.S. Congress is about to authorize a doozy with Mexico that has critics sounding alarm bells. (more...)

By now the whole world knows about the 500 ducks that died after landing in one of Syncrude’s toxic tailing ponds in Northern Alberta. The tragedy occurred just after the province had put aside $25 million in public relations cash to convince the White House that tar sands crude was environmentally friendly. (more...)

Last week, at the close of the fourth SPP summit in New Orleans, Prime Minister Harper issued a joint statement with Presidents Bush and Calderon that reaffirmed their commitment to the NAFTA trading model despite fresh criticism of free trade in all three countries. (more...)

At the end of this week’s Security and Prosperity Partnership Summit in New Orleans, Prime Minister Harper said that, "Canada really is confident that the next President will also understand the importance of NAFTA, and the importance of the commercial relationship between the United States and Canada.” (more...)

As reported by Michael Oliveira of the Canadian Press yesterday, “Parched U.S. states could start ‘water wars’ in the years ahead and fight for access to Great Lakes resources as they become more desperate to meet growing needs, Canadian and American experts said Wednesday at a water conference.” (more...)

As the NAFTA leaders and their big business counterparts gather in New Orleans a few days from now for the fourth North American Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) summit, it is worth reflecting on its role in North American integration. (more...)

Dave Coles, the CEP president who unmasked a police officer posing as a rock-wielding protestor at Montebello last August, has filed an official complaint with the Police Ethics Commissioner about the use of agents provocateurs by the Sureté de Québéc. (more...)

Maude Barlow, national chairperson of the Council of Canadians, is warning Albertans that the government “could be forced to shell out hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation to foreign-owned oilsands companies under NAFTA if a drought forced the province to ration water,” according to an article in the Edmonton Journal. (more...)

Chevron Corp, a member of the North American Competitiveness Council, has “submitted proposals to tap oil and natural-gas reserves in Mexico amid declining output from the second-biggest crude-producing nation in the Western Hemisphere,” according to Bloomberg this week. (more...)

Homeland Security czar Michael Chertoff met with Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day in Ottawa this week to discuss progress on the Security and Prosperity Partnership. (more...)

The group No One Is Illegal has issued an action alert asking citizens to contact their MPs (particularly Liberal MPs) to urge them to vote no to a series of amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA). (more...)

This month, President Bush will host the leaders of Canada and Mexico to advance the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), a project Lou Dobbs has predicted will "end the United States as we know it." (more...)

Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier met with his counterparts, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Mexican Foreign Secretary Patricia Espinosa, in Washington, D.C. today “to prepare the work for a leaders meeting that will take place in New Orleans,” according to a statement. (more...)

Prime Minister Harper’s stubborn refusal to save Omar Khadr from the injustice of a Guantanamo Bay show trial became even harder to grasp today as we learned that Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier has agreed the process is unlawful. (more...)

There appears to be an elite consensus forming around a C.D. Howe Institute proposal to ditch the trilateral SPP model for a more meaningful bilateral trade agreement with the United States. (more...)

With three weeks to go until the Security and Prosperity Partnership leaders summit in New Orleans, the usual suspects have launched a barrage of policy papers to try and sway the public agenda towards even deeper economic and security integration than has been proposed to date. Meanwhile, International Trade Minister David Emerson has gathered the provinces to develop a consensus on Canada’s NAFTA position should the United States force a renegotiation after the November presidential election. (more...)

March 28, 2008
Posted by Denis Salter (Council of Canadians Montreal chapter activist)

Prompted by an interview with the Minister of Industry, Jim Prentice, about the workings of the Security and Prosperity Partnership, Hélène Buzzetti published an article last week in Le Devoir (March 22-23) entitled, “Adieux aux promesses de Montbello” (‘Kiss Montebello promises good-bye’). (more...)

The extent of Canadian government complicity in torture, partly exposed during the Maher Arar Commission over the past two years, is becoming even more apparent with the U.S. show trial of Canadian citizen Omar Khadr. (more...)

“The federal Conservatives are moving to give the Immigration Minister more power to control the number and type of people allowed into the country – and the speed with which they are welcomed here,” wrote the Globe and Mail on March 15. (more...)

The Department of Public Safety is reporting today that a joint RCMP-Homeland Security pilot project, which put U.S. security agents on Canadian maritime patrols and vice versa, will be made permanent. (more...)

According to an NDP press release last week, elected representatives in all three NAFTA countries “have agreed to file simultaneous legislative motions to stop further implementation of the so-called Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) process, imposed undemocratically on our three nations, and to open up the process that has taken place behind closed doors to instead have a transparent review and scrutiny within their respective legislatures.” (more...)

In an effort to demonstrate that the best defence is a good offence, a new Fraser Institute report by Alex Moens and Michael Cust, argues that the Canadian government must “expand and speed up the SPP goals,” and make a priority of “rebranding the SPP talks… as well as explaining the specific objective of the talks to the public” at the next summit in New Orleans this April or risk the trilateral partnership losing much of its momentum. (more...)

More evidence today that the business-friendly SPP (like NAFTA, upon which it is built) poses an increasing risk to global as well as continental public interest policy. (more...)