SPP Watch
November 2, 2007
SPP WATCH is a new feature of our Integrate This! website, devoted to challenging the Security and Prosperity Partnership 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. SPP WATCH will make those links. As well as regular SPP updates, we will continue to post new reports, interviews and multimedia presentations critical of what's often called the "deep integration" of North America. The site is updated regularly so visit often.
Here's what went up on Integrate This! in the past week:
2007 North American Forum agenda
October 31, 2007
Posted by Stuart Trew
Last year it was Banff, this year -- Puerto Vallarta. High-ranking civil servants and military officials narrowly dodged a hurricane, according to weather reports, when they landed in the Mexican resort town on October 12 for two days of brainstorming about "building a North American community." (more...)
SPP haunting Washington this Halloween
October 31, 2007
Posted by Stuart Trew
True to the Halloween spirit, if the SPP is dead, then it has risen from the crypt to haunt the halls of corporate Washington. (more...)
U.S. consumer advocate says no to new funds
October 30, 2007
Posted by Stuart Trew
According to the New York Times today, "The top official for consumer product safety [in the United States] has asked Congress in recent days to reject legislation that would strengthen the agency that polices thousands of consumer goods, from toys to tools." (more...)
Plan Mexico and the SPP
October 30, 2007
Posted by Stuart Trew
A very interesting article from Laura Carlsen at the Americas Program in Mexico City that links Plan Mexico (officially the Mérida Initiative) to the SPP, casting the U.S. subsidization of the Mexican military under the plan as, in Bush's terms, "a new paradigm for security cooperation." (more...)
For more information on the SPP, please visit www.integratethis.ca
SPP Watch
2 posts
• Page 1 of 1
STOP, THIEF! THAT'S MY COUNTRY!
by Oscar » Wed Jan 07, 2009 1:26 pm
----- Original Message -----
From: Jacob Rempel
To: MP:StephaneDion
Cc: MP;DominicLeBlanc ; JoyceMurray
Sent: Monday, January 05, 2009 7:26 PM
Subject: "--- that's my country" -- article about the SPP, by Silver Donald Cameron
EXCERPT from Silver Donald Cameron’s article appended below my note:
“Their instrument is the Security and Prosperity Partnership -- which, astonishingly, continues to fly below the public radar screen, though its nature and purpose are perfectly well-known….
“The SPP began in 2005, in -- appropriately in Waco, Texas, -- where George W. Bush met with Mexican President Vicente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin.”
================
Dear Stephane Dion
I greatly regret the breakdown of the coalition plan, which was a move toward a unified progressive political force in Canada to marginalize the neo-cons.
I want to continue to hear from you. Mr. Dion.
My remarks about the excerpt from the article by Silver Donald Cameron:
Actually, the US drive for their hegemonic continental integration began fifteen and twenty-five years ago when Brian Mulroney was accepting and promoting the Free Trade Agreement and the NAFTA. These agreements already have undermined Canada’s independence. Now the SPP is a further stage in the process for the USA regime and US corporations achieving their old dream – their dream of a USA manifest destiny of continental hegemony.
(And let us not think that a kinder, gentler Barack Obama will reverse the process.)
However, the Government of Canada can reverse the process. A six-month notice of intent to abrogate can put Canada into the more advantageous WTO framework of trade rules, not perfect but more amenable to necessary changes. As well, Canada would then be free to negotiate fair trade bi-lateral agreements with progressive new governments in South America as well as with Pacific rim and African countries, all of which look for such fair trade agreements.
---Jacob Rempel --- yasch@telus.net
=======================================
STOP, THIEF! THAT'S MY COUNTRY!
http://silverdonaldonsunday.blogspot.com/
by Silver Donald Cameron January 4, 2009
What I want to know is, by what authority are these monkeys doing this stuff?
The monkeys are the governments of Canada, the USA and Mexico -- and what they are doing is, basically, stealing our countries, welding them together, and giving them to global corporations. Their instrument is the Security and Prosperity Partnership -- which, astonishingly, continues to fly below the public radar screen, though its nature and purpose are perfectly well-known.
The SPP began in 2005, in -- appropriately -- Waco, Texas, where George W. Bush met with Mexican President Vicente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin. (Remember him?) The three agreed to "fast-track" the economic integration of the continent. In 2006, meeting in Cancun, the trio Martin now replaced by Harper created a North American Competitiveness Council, made up of 10 big-business CEOs from each country, who undertook to meet annually with senior government officials to discuss the corporate sector's erotic fantasies about the new continental economy.
Notice that there's no parallel Council of Citizens or Small Businesses. The governments are taking advice only from the CEOs of Ford, Lockheed, Merck Pharmaceuticals, Chevron, General Electric, Wal-Mart, Bell Canada, Scotiabank and the like.
They're movin' right along. An Alberta professor named Dr. Janine Brodie recently presented a paper on "Executive Power and the Privatization of Authority." Now there's a phrase.
Brodie quotes Paul Cellucci, the former US Ambassador who berated Canada for not going to war in Iraq, as saying that "10 years from now, maybe 15 years from now we're gonna look back and we are going to have a union in everything but name."
Did you vote for that? No? Then by what authority are these monkeys doing this stuff?
Last fall, my friend Wendy Holm, an agrologist and writer in BC, reviewed the report of a Competition Policy Review Panel appointed by the Harper government to identify the changes that Canada needs to make in preparation for full scale North American economic integration.
For starters, the Panel thought Canada should smile upon mergers of large Canadian financial institutions. We were being needlessly cautious, since "appropriate regulatory safeguards already exist to protect prudential soundness, competition and the public interest."
Ah. Right. Those would be the safeguards which worked so well for Bear Stearns, Lehmann Brothers, Merrill Lynch, etc., and so efficiently protected the public interest that the US taxpayer is now on the hook for something like a trillion dollars. The Panel also recommended that, when considering big mergers, the "net benefit to Canada" test be dropped.
Breathtaking. Canadian householders and taxpayers are already paying for innumerable corporate bungles and the government of Canada is not even supposed to ask whether such financial engineering is in the public interest?
The Panel goes on to suggest that Canada should neuter its Competition Act, welcome increased foreign competition generally, reduce corporate taxes, and open up Canada's airline, uranium and telecommunications sectors to increased foreign investment. These worthies also thought that Canada should harmonize product and professional standards and legal requirements with the US. In other words, if we have tougher health and safety standards than the US, ours should be weakened.
Did you vote for that? I thought not. So by what authority are these monkeys doing this stuff?
As an award-winning agrologist, Wendy Holm focuses on food and agriculture. She sees the SPP as a direct threat to Canadian farmers (who would lose the protection of supply-management regimes) and to Canadian consumers.
"Canadians have not put a priority on farm and food policy because as a nation we have never gone without," Holm writes. "Embarrassingly, Canada remains one of the few nations in the world that does NOT have a national food policy. But things are quickly changing, and community discussions around peak oil, peak food, food security, food safety, food miles, food sovereignty and food democracy are moving that change forward."
Under the SPP, such discussions will be pointless. Canada will have lost the right to create or enforce national policies in areas like food, energy, and investment.
Removing that right is precisely the objective of the SPP.
Did we elect these monkeys to give away the country? No? Then by what authority are they doing this stuff?
Silver Donald Cameron
www.silverdonaldcameron.ca
<http://www.silverdonaldcameron.ca/>
From: Jacob Rempel
To: MP:StephaneDion
Cc: MP;DominicLeBlanc ; JoyceMurray
Sent: Monday, January 05, 2009 7:26 PM
Subject: "--- that's my country" -- article about the SPP, by Silver Donald Cameron
EXCERPT from Silver Donald Cameron’s article appended below my note:
“Their instrument is the Security and Prosperity Partnership -- which, astonishingly, continues to fly below the public radar screen, though its nature and purpose are perfectly well-known….
“The SPP began in 2005, in -- appropriately in Waco, Texas, -- where George W. Bush met with Mexican President Vicente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin.”
================
Dear Stephane Dion
I greatly regret the breakdown of the coalition plan, which was a move toward a unified progressive political force in Canada to marginalize the neo-cons.
I want to continue to hear from you. Mr. Dion.
My remarks about the excerpt from the article by Silver Donald Cameron:
Actually, the US drive for their hegemonic continental integration began fifteen and twenty-five years ago when Brian Mulroney was accepting and promoting the Free Trade Agreement and the NAFTA. These agreements already have undermined Canada’s independence. Now the SPP is a further stage in the process for the USA regime and US corporations achieving their old dream – their dream of a USA manifest destiny of continental hegemony.
(And let us not think that a kinder, gentler Barack Obama will reverse the process.)
However, the Government of Canada can reverse the process. A six-month notice of intent to abrogate can put Canada into the more advantageous WTO framework of trade rules, not perfect but more amenable to necessary changes. As well, Canada would then be free to negotiate fair trade bi-lateral agreements with progressive new governments in South America as well as with Pacific rim and African countries, all of which look for such fair trade agreements.
---Jacob Rempel --- yasch@telus.net
=======================================
STOP, THIEF! THAT'S MY COUNTRY!
http://silverdonaldonsunday.blogspot.com/
by Silver Donald Cameron January 4, 2009
What I want to know is, by what authority are these monkeys doing this stuff?
The monkeys are the governments of Canada, the USA and Mexico -- and what they are doing is, basically, stealing our countries, welding them together, and giving them to global corporations. Their instrument is the Security and Prosperity Partnership -- which, astonishingly, continues to fly below the public radar screen, though its nature and purpose are perfectly well-known.
The SPP began in 2005, in -- appropriately -- Waco, Texas, where George W. Bush met with Mexican President Vicente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin. (Remember him?) The three agreed to "fast-track" the economic integration of the continent. In 2006, meeting in Cancun, the trio Martin now replaced by Harper created a North American Competitiveness Council, made up of 10 big-business CEOs from each country, who undertook to meet annually with senior government officials to discuss the corporate sector's erotic fantasies about the new continental economy.
Notice that there's no parallel Council of Citizens or Small Businesses. The governments are taking advice only from the CEOs of Ford, Lockheed, Merck Pharmaceuticals, Chevron, General Electric, Wal-Mart, Bell Canada, Scotiabank and the like.
They're movin' right along. An Alberta professor named Dr. Janine Brodie recently presented a paper on "Executive Power and the Privatization of Authority." Now there's a phrase.
Brodie quotes Paul Cellucci, the former US Ambassador who berated Canada for not going to war in Iraq, as saying that "10 years from now, maybe 15 years from now we're gonna look back and we are going to have a union in everything but name."
Did you vote for that? No? Then by what authority are these monkeys doing this stuff?
Last fall, my friend Wendy Holm, an agrologist and writer in BC, reviewed the report of a Competition Policy Review Panel appointed by the Harper government to identify the changes that Canada needs to make in preparation for full scale North American economic integration.
For starters, the Panel thought Canada should smile upon mergers of large Canadian financial institutions. We were being needlessly cautious, since "appropriate regulatory safeguards already exist to protect prudential soundness, competition and the public interest."
Ah. Right. Those would be the safeguards which worked so well for Bear Stearns, Lehmann Brothers, Merrill Lynch, etc., and so efficiently protected the public interest that the US taxpayer is now on the hook for something like a trillion dollars. The Panel also recommended that, when considering big mergers, the "net benefit to Canada" test be dropped.
Breathtaking. Canadian householders and taxpayers are already paying for innumerable corporate bungles and the government of Canada is not even supposed to ask whether such financial engineering is in the public interest?
The Panel goes on to suggest that Canada should neuter its Competition Act, welcome increased foreign competition generally, reduce corporate taxes, and open up Canada's airline, uranium and telecommunications sectors to increased foreign investment. These worthies also thought that Canada should harmonize product and professional standards and legal requirements with the US. In other words, if we have tougher health and safety standards than the US, ours should be weakened.
Did you vote for that? I thought not. So by what authority are these monkeys doing this stuff?
As an award-winning agrologist, Wendy Holm focuses on food and agriculture. She sees the SPP as a direct threat to Canadian farmers (who would lose the protection of supply-management regimes) and to Canadian consumers.
"Canadians have not put a priority on farm and food policy because as a nation we have never gone without," Holm writes. "Embarrassingly, Canada remains one of the few nations in the world that does NOT have a national food policy. But things are quickly changing, and community discussions around peak oil, peak food, food security, food safety, food miles, food sovereignty and food democracy are moving that change forward."
Under the SPP, such discussions will be pointless. Canada will have lost the right to create or enforce national policies in areas like food, energy, and investment.
Removing that right is precisely the objective of the SPP.
Did we elect these monkeys to give away the country? No? Then by what authority are they doing this stuff?
Silver Donald Cameron
www.silverdonaldcameron.ca
<http://www.silverdonaldcameron.ca/>
- Oscar
- Site Admin
- Posts: 9126
- Joined: Wed May 03, 2006 3:23 pm
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