Council of Canadians trade campaigner Stuart Trew highlights that the Telegraph-Journal reports today, “Whether the (North American Competitiveness Council) will be allowed to meet with the national leaders in 2010 remains unclear.”
“The 30-member North American Competitiveness Council, made up of executives from Canada, the United States and Mexico, has not provided face-to-face advice to the countries’ three leaders so far under the Barack Obama administration – a decision taken by the U.S. president.”
“Though Obama, Harper and Mexican President Felipe Calderon met last month in Guadalajara, the executives who make up the council were not invited.”
David Ganong, a Canadian member of the NACC, says, “The new U.S. administration thought they wanted to do things differently than the previous U.S. administration. …We’ll see whether the U.S. administration is more open to it next year.”
The article also notes that, “(Thomas) d’Aquino (of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives) said he was unconcerned about the future of trilateral discussion despite that Obama’s administration is ‘cool’ to the continuation of the Security and Prosperity Partnership. ‘The reality is that whether it’s called SPP or it’s given a new name, which I predict will be the case, there will always be very important levels of trilateral collaboration,’ d’Aquino said. ‘…Whether the NACC lives or dies, does not mean the death knell to co-operation.'”
As we have previously noted, Sun Media columnist Barbara Yaffe wrote in April 2008 that “The Security and Prosperity Partnership, launched in 2005, is so misunderstood by the public and so discredited by opposition groups it should be relaunched and rebranded. That’s the view of Simon Fraser University political scientist Alexander Moens who has just completed a study of the SPP for the Fraser Institute…”
Yaffe adds, “The reason for declining interest lies with effective lobbying by key groups, like the left-leaning Council of Canadians which has pointed to the closed-door nature of the SPP negotiations as a basis for suspicion. The ‘deep integration,’ the council asserts in its campaign titled ‘Integrate This!’, will redirect domestic interests to U.S. priorities. The group also worries that the Americans would try to gain further access to Canada’s natural resources.”
WEB-LINKS
The full Telegraph-Journal article is at http://nbbusinessjournal.canadaeast.com/journal/article/782505.
Barbara Yaffe’s column is at http://www2.canada.com/vancouversun/columnists/story.html?id=6953a666-a6f7-42ad-b607-7aa2d558f5c7.
Our analysis on the defeat of the SPP and the continued threat of deep integration can be read at http://canadians.org/join/wins.html.
