The Commons Standing Committee on International Trade held hearings last month on Canada-U.S. relations, with a special focus on the North American Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) being advanced by the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, and other business organizations. The CCPA’s executive director, Bruce Campbell, was invited to make a presentation to the Committee. His remarks, along with his answers to questions by some MPs on the Committee, follow.
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International trade and investment, deep integration
The CCPA has been for more than two decades at the forefront of analysis on the threats to Canadian society from deepening integration with the United States–perhaps better described as the gradual Americanization of Canada. This integration, which took shape with the 1989 Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (CUFTA) and was expanded to include Mexico in the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), looms even larger since the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington.
The Atlantica conference has drawn renewed attention to plans for a cross-border economic trading zone. Organizers say they want to tone down the rhetoric. Clearly, they want to distance themselves from the controversy surrounding their ideas for a transportation corridor to Buffalo, accelerating energy exports, and deregulation. This leaves the question of what exactly Atlantica stands for.
Held in Africa for the first time, the World Social Forum (WSF) brought 66,000 people to Nairobi, Kenya, from 110 countries and highlighted the continent’s many anti-imperialist struggles. In a united voice, Africans said no to U.S. neo-colonialism, World Bank/IMF economic control, and Western corporate plunder of their resources. The forum displayed an Africa awash in resistance that more than 500 years of slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism have not been able to suppress.
Powerful business and political leaders on both sides of the border are working hard, both openly and stealthily, to bind Canada more closely to the United States. It’s billed as an economic partnership, but inevitably, if successful, it will transform this country into a political appendage of the southern “superpower.” Canada may retain a semblance of sovereignty, but in most practical ways it will be a U.S. vassal state.
Questions and concerns regarding the scope and depth of Canada’s relationship with the United States loom larger than ever since 9/11. In Whose Canada?, contributors provide a comprehensive analysis of the legacy of free trade and examine the challenges that deepening bilateral integration – including its latest incarnation in the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) – presents for Canadian sovereignty and public policy autonomy.