Continental Divide
All eyes are on Canada as Stephen Harper, George W. Bush and Felipe Calderon meet at Montebello next week to discuss the Security and Prosperity Partnership. Some call the agreement a plot to create a North American Union, others hail it as the dawn of a new era
Kelly Patterson, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Saturday, August 18, 2007

To some, it is a "corporate coup d'état," a conspiracy by big business to turn Canada into the 51st state by stealth. Others see it the other way around -- as a plot to destroy the U.S. by forcing it into a North American Union with "socialist Canada" and "corrupt Mexico."

Its defenders hail it as a bold and visionary plan, the only way to give the three neighbours a fighting chance against the twin threats of global terrorism and robust economic rivals such as China.

And skeptics argue that it's nothing but an eye-glazing bureaucratic boondoggle, with all the sex appeal of the Ottawa phone book.

It is the Security and Prosperity Partnership, a sprawling effort to forge closer ties among the three nations in everything from anti-terrorism measures to energy strategies to food-safety and pesticide rules. Launched two years ago by then-prime minister Paul Martin, President George W. Bush and his Mexican counterpart, Vicente Fox, at the "Three Amigos" summit in Waco, Texas, the SPP grew out of concerns that security crackdowns would cripple cross-border trade.

With juggernauts such as China and India looming on the horizon, the three countries agreed they had to act fast to stay competitive. Now, the SPP has grown into a mind-boggling array of some 300 initiatives, involving 19 teams of bureaucrats from all three countries.

Its stated mission is "to keep our borders closed to terrorism yet open to trade" by fostering "greater co-operation and information-sharing," in security protocols and economic areas such as product safety.

Little-known in Canada, the accord, if fully implemented, could affect almost every aspect of Canadian life, from what drugs you can access to whether you can board a plane and even what ingredients go into the cornflakes you eat in the morning. And while you may not have heard of the SPP, you may have already heard some of the controversies it has sparked: Canada's adoption of a no-fly list; negotiations to lower Canada's pesticide standards to American levels; or fears the deal will lead to bulk-water exports to the U.S.

Liberal party leader Stéphane Dion charged yesterday that, "under the veil of secrecy," Harper has let the Americans run roughshod over Canada, covertly using the SPP to impose a U.S. agenda on Canada.That's not what the Liberals intended when they signed the deal, which was meant to give Canada a stronger voice in Washington, not turn it into a pale "imitation" of the U.S., he says.

Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians says it is big business that is calling the shots, pushing aggressively for the harmonization -- and downgrading -- of everything from security norms to food standards. "Canadians would be shocked" if they knew the true scope of the SPP, says Barlow, whose Ottawa-based organization says it represents about 100,000 members.

Fringe groups such as the Canadian Action Party and the Minutemen in the U.S. go farther, arguing that the SPP is a plot to sweep all three nations into a North American Union.

"Where are they getting this stuff?" retorts Thomas d'Aquino, head of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, which helped launch the SPP."This is a very nitty-gritty, workaday initiative" to make trade safer and more efficient, through steps such as expanding border crossings and
information-sharing programs on food and drug safety, he says.

Other SPP projects are no-brainers, such as plans to co-operate in fighting West Nile virus and flu pandemics.

As for fears of a North American Union, "anyone who believes that is smoking something," says d'Aquino.

This weekend the debate hits the headlines across the nation as the three heads of state and their advisers converge on Montebello, 60 kilometres east of Ottawa, for the SPP's third annual summit.

Thousands of protesters are also expected to descend on the area, hoping to confront the "Three Banditos" about a deal they say is a secretive sellout to the superpower to Canada's south.

The road toward the SPP began with the shutdown of the Canada-U.S. border after the terrorist attacks on the U.S."It was a disaster for trade," recalls d'Aquino. "Suddenly, trucks which could whisk through the border in four to six minutes before 9/11 could take 18 hours."

Even now, security checks can slow border crossings to as long as three hours, he says, and businesses on both sides of the border live in fear of another emergency clampdown. Cross-border trade is worth more than $1 billion a day, and accounts for about 80 per cent of Canada's total exports. Border delays since 2001 have cost at least $14 billion to both economies, according to the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.

Within weeks of the terrorist attacks, the Liberal government of the day was pressing Washington to do something; by December, the two countries had hammered out the Smart Border Declaration, a 30-point program to co-ordinate and streamline border security. With border security suddenly at the top of the U.S. agenda, business and policy leaders on both sides of the 49th parallel saw a golden opportunity to hash out a host of other trade-related issues, such as energy supplies and regulatory differences that stop some goods at the border.

By 2005, the SPP was up and running. Building on the Smart Border deal, it had a sprawling agenda of roughly 300 projects, some new, some ongoing, that ran the gamut from joint security exercises to the study of migratory species.

"We always hoped from the outset we could broaden it beyond security," says Roland Paris, a University of Ottawa professor who worked as an adviser in the Privy Council Office when the SPP was launched. He adds that the SPP's architects hoped the "regular high-level meetings" would help "overcome bureaucratic inertia."

But they also helped big business and its government allies bypass the public and Parliament, to push through a host of controversial changes without debate or scrutiny, critics charge.

Since most of the projects under the SPP are regulatory, the process has been going on behind closed doors in the bureaucracy, with no input from Parliament, civil-society groups say. Calling it "NAFTA on steroids," they say the accord has enshrined and fast-tracked a longstanding effort to quietly harmonize Canadian programs with those of the U.S. in everything from military policy to food and drug standards.

"The SPP is an unacceptable, closed-door process with enormous implications for Canadians," says NDP trade critic Peter Julian.

But Roland Paris scoffs at charges the SPP is a grand design. If anything, he says, it is a timid collection of piddling efforts that has become bogged down in bureaucratic red tape. This is not a political vision of the future of the continent. If it were, it would be worth the fuss."

Charges of Secrecy

The only outsiders with a formal role in the SPP are mega-corporations, through the North American Competitiveness Council (NACC), which brings together 30 business representatives from the three countries to help direct the accord. Created in 2006, the NACC includes giants such as Wal-Mart, Home Depot and Lockheed-Martin, all of which have a vested interest in seeing regulations slashed, Barlow says.She stresses that she is all for co-operation among the three countries -- as long as the public interest, not corporate profit, is the driving force. "Continent-wide regulations are fine if they set high standards, but who is making the decisions, and on what basis?"

Foreign Affairs officials say the SPP working groups do consult with "relevant stakeholders." However, there is no public list of those stakeholders, and the working groups' reports are not publicly available.

Even MPs can't easily get the details on SPP projects beyond vaguely worded lists of "initiatives" and "milestones" on government websites, Julian argues. Liberal trade critic Navdeep Bains agrees: "We have real concerns about transparency."

More than a year after the NDP filed Access to Information requests on the SPP, the government has not released a single document, Julian says. Responding to similar requests from U.S. groups, the American government has released only vaguely worded or heavily censored documents.

With the backing of the Liberals and the Bloc, Julian successfully pushed for three days of committee hearings on the SPP this spring. But he says that's not nearly enough, given the vast scope of the deal. His party is calling for the SPP to be suspended until MPs and the public get a chance to examine it. Dion is also planning a House of Commons resolution demanding more information.

Tory MP Pierre Poilievre, who represents Nepean-Carleton, retorts that the Liberals themselves set up the SPP. It's not a conspiracy, he says, but simply an effort to build a better economy and a safer world. "What's Stéphane Dion got against security and jobs?"

Concerns about SPP secrecy have been headline news in the U.S. recently: Last month the U.S. House of Representatives voted 362 to 63 in favour of cutting all funding for SPP transport projects until more details are made public. Anti-SPP resolutions have also been tabled in 18 state legislatures.

The charges of secrecy are nonsense, says Paris, arguing that many of the SPP projects are just a part of normal bureaucrat-to-bureaucrat business between Canada and the U.S., and "would not have been announced in the past at all." "If anything, the effect has been to increase transparency."

D'Aquino agrees, pointing out that the NACC made its first report to the SPP public as soon as it came out in February. And the largely technical report is hardly shocking, he adds. "If I give it to you to read at 11, I guarantee you'll be asleep by 11:10."

Human Rights
Intelligence-sharing:
Under the SPP, Canada has pledged to intensify and fast-track its efforts to "share data on high-risk travellers" with the U.S. and Mexico, despite ongoing controversy over the ordeal of Maher Arar. Arar spent a year in a Syrian prison, where he was tortured, after U.S. officials deported him, acting on shared information from Canada that turned out to be false.
"Maher Arar is a chilling example of the dangers of a convergence of watchlists," says Barlow, warning that similar cases are bound to arise if Canada pursues the SPP goal of greater "interoperability" with U.S. security forces.

D'Aquino agrees intelligence-sharing can be problematic. "As a strong advocate of human rights, I am dead against any evolution to a police state. "But we do live in a world with real terrorist threats ... We all have to accept some sacrifices to achieve security for all," he says, adding that it is common practice for many nations to exchange intelligence information.

No-fly lists:
A Canadian no-fly list, described as a "key milestone" in the SPP's Report to Leaders in 2005, went into effect just months after a public inquiry exonerated Arar. Canadian officials refused to confirm whether the list would be shared with the U.S. Meanwhile, the U.S. has refused to remove Arar's name from its own no-fly list, despite a formal request from Canada. The federal government says Canada's no-fly list was designed to avoid the kind of errors that have plagued the American one, which reportedly includes some 44,000 names, including preschoolers and, famously, U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy.

The much smaller Canadian list includes an appeal process, but critics say it is unfair because complainants are not allowed to know why they are listed. In June, days after it came into force, federal Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart and her provincial counterparts appealed to the government to suspend the list.

Immigration:
The SPP also commits Canada to developing "compatible immigration security measures." These include admission requirements and visa decision-making standards -- a provision that alarms human-rights groups, who say some U.S. practices are draconian compared to Canada's.

For example, under the Safe Third Country program, which preceded the SPP but also stresses bilateral co-operation, Canada now hands refugees who have come here via the U.S. back to American officials, who routinely throw them into detention facilities until their status is determined The forced confinement of asylum-seekers is "in breach of international standards," and leads to "Canada being involved in the violation of human rights," warns Amnesty International spokesman Alain Roy.
Melanie Carkner of Immigration Canada says the U.S. and Canadian security systems are already very similar. "Canada is not contemplating any changes to its policies or processes as a result of (the SPP)."

Forced fingerprinting:
One of the potentially most controversial human-rights issues raised by the SPP is a proposal for preclearance facilities at land-border crossings similar to those at airports: U.S. agents stationed on the Canadian side of the border would pre-screen travellers going to the U.S., and vice versa.
The hitch:
The U.S. insisted its border guards be allowed to force anyone who approaches the border to submit to fingerprinting, even if they decide not to cross. This would violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in Canada, where only people charged with a crime may be fingerprinted against their will.
U.S. negotiators walked away from the table, killing plans for pilot projects at Fort Erie and Lansdowne.

Afterward, some Canadian observers started calling for Canada to loosen its rules: "We must raise our security checks to the U.S. level and find a single, harmonized set of security criteria," wrote Alexander Moens of the Fraser Institute when the deal fell through.
Liberal Navdeep Bains says the Tories' failure to get the U.S. to compromise shows they are not defending Canadian interests. Clearing border congestion "is absolutely crucial for us," he says, adding that "Canada has lost 90,000 manufacturing jobs since the start of this year."

Human-rights vision:
This week, the Canadian, U.S. and Mexican branches of Amnesty International wrote a blistering letter to the three heads of state, noting that the SPP continues to "expand without any perceptible effort to incorporate a meaningful human rights agenda," despite repeated appeals from Amnesty and other watchdog groups.
Of the SPP's 19 working groups, "none have a discernible human rights focus," it notes -- despite the fact that many of the issues covered by the SPP affect human rights and can "even lead to serious human rights violations." The agency, which has more than 350,000 members across the continent, says there is an "urgent need" to address issues such as the human-rights effect of counter-terrorism laws, the rights of migrants and refugees and the impact of trade deals on human rights.

Alain Roy says the low profile of human rights in the SPP is ironic: "How can security and prosperity be achieved without human rights?"

Water Exports
A national firestorm erupted in April when news emerged that Canadian water was on the table in a series of conferences held by researchers tasked with designing a "blueprint" for the future of the SPP Talks for the North American Future 2025 Project included the discussion of "water transfers" from Canada, according to an outline of the visioning exercise, which is funded by the U.S. and Mexico.

"It's no secret that the U.S. is going to need water," project leader Armand Peschard-Sverdrup, of the prestigious Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, explained. The federal government later affirmed it has no intention of allowing the bulk export of water, adding that legal protections would prevent that anyway. However, the federal government has jurisdiction only over waterways that are shared across the border with the U.S.; there is no binding legislation preventing provinces from allowing the export of the vast reserves of water they control.

A 1985 report urged the government to come up with a policy anticipating pressure for bulk-water exports, but no action was taken, according to Peter Pearse, a University of British Columbia professor who co-wrote the federally funded study.

Public Safety

Food safety, drug assessments, pesticide rules, auto standards, consumer-product standards -- all these and more are under review through the SPP, a process that could affect almost all aspects of Canadians' everyday life.For the past two years, scores of bureaucrats in all three countries have been poring over their regulations, looking to streamline and harmonize them where possible, or, in cases where this was already ongoing, to fast-track the process.Directed to work toward common North American standards, regulators must justify the scientific basis for any differences. They are also working on a trilateral Regulatory Co-operation Framework, to be finished within the year.

This could spell disaster for Canadians, warns Maude Barlow.

Arguing that standards have plummeted under the Bush regime, she fears Canadian safeguards will be gutted -- especially since it was the U.S. that took on the drive for "regulatory convergence" when the three countries divvied up the main SPP tasks last year (Canada took on border efficiencies and Mexico, energy integration). Little is known about these closed-door discussions, but what has come to light is deeply disturbing, critics say:

Pesticide residues:
Canada is in talks to raise the amount of pesticide residues it allows on fruits and vegetables on hundreds of products, after the SPP identified Canada's stricter standards as "barriers to trade."

Canadian residue limits are stricter than those in the U.S. for 40 per cent of the products it regulates; in only 10 per cent of cases are the U.S. rules more stringent. Both countries already lag behind the European Union, Australia and the World Health Organization when it comes to many common pesticide residues, in some cases allowing hundreds of times the limits set in other developed nations, according to a 2006 study by David Boyd of the David Suzuki Foundation.

After news of the talks emerged in May, Health Canada officials said no limits would be changed without public consultation, and noted that tests suggest that in most cases, residue levels are well below the Canadian limits. However, Boyd's report questioned those results, noting that they differ wildly from those of nations such as Britain and the U.S. Stéphane Dion cited the pesticide issue as an example where the Tories have failed Canadians, adding that the SPP "must be a race to the top, not a race to the bottom."

Unsafe imports:
The SPP emphasizes the fast-tracking and expansion of trade through Pacific gateways -- an effort that many fear will mean an explosion in unsafe imports, at a time when dangerous imports from China, from toothpaste to toys, are already flooding the continent.Concern that crucial safety provisions have not been factored into SPP fast-tracking plans was a key factor when the U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to block SPP funding last month;

Republican Duncan Hunter told the House only one to two per cent of cargo containers are now inspected. The U.S. and Canada are reviewing their regulatory systems; Harper plans to raise the issue at this week's summit, although an aide later said no agreement was likely to emerge right this week.

Hazardous substances:
Noting that the list of hazardous substances permitted in Canada differs from that of the U.S., the NACC identified the differences as a trade irritant, saying they "prevent some U.S. products from being sold in Canada." Asked what these substances were and whether the Canadian list would be expanded, government officials and NACC spokesmen in Canada and the U.S. said they did not know.

Defenders of the SPP dismiss concerns about regulatory change as fear-mongering, saying the accord aims only to cut out minor, needless variations between the three countries. The goal is to end the "tyranny of small differences" that can turn the border into a theatre of the absurd, says John Kirton, a University of Toronto professor and an expert in the environmental effects of free trade.

For example, Canada's rules on the nutritional content of cornflakes are slightly different from those in the U.S., forcing American cereal exporters to make separate batches for Canada. "So many Canadians drive across the border every day, and sometimes they eat American cornflakes. None of them have died," he observes. "There's no scientific foundation for that difference in the rules."

If anything, the SPP could dramatically raise standards across North America, proponents say, because it heavily promotes information-sharing among the three countries. Scientists would swap data on everything from car safety to new chemicals to consumer products and food safety, enabling regulators to evaluate products more thoroughly, and to react more quickly to public-health threats.

The SPP also includes projects with obvious benefits for all three nations, such as reducing sulphur in fuel and air pollution from ships, and co-ordinating efforts to curb plant and animal diseases.

It just makes sense to work closely with our neighbours on health and safety issues that affect the whole continent, says Kirton. "If (Green party leader) Elizabeth May were supreme commander-in-chief of Canada, she could not prevent long-range transport of air pollutants from the south. We need to stop that at the source." He dismisses the argument that convergence with U.S. standards would drag Canada's down. Previous free-trade deals such as NAFTA have "not lowered standards in any of the three countries," says Kirton, who co-authored a book on the issue in 1999. In fact, Canada has had to raise its standards to match those in the U.S. in some areas, such as auto emissions, he points out.

D'Aquino agrees: "The U.S. regulatory system is unmatched anywhere in the world. ... Look what it takes to get a drug patent in the U.S. The regulatory hurdles are so huge, it can take 20 years for a company to get approval."

However, U.S. agencies from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have been under intense fire in recent years, as a growing chorus of scientists and lawmakers charge they have become the lapdogs of industry, due to political interference and industry-stacked advisory panels under the Bush administration.

Earlier this year, Bush issued an executive order under which political appointees will supervise the work of regulators in all federal agencies."They've made their regulatory process subservient to a political agenda," says Barlow, predicting that Canada, where regulators operate at arm's length from politicians, will be forced to follow suit.

Meanwhile, FDA is reeling from a series of missteps, from the approval this year of a diabetes drug linked to heart disease, to the release of the arthritis drug Vioxx, which is linked to more than 85,000 heart attacks, 30 per cent of them fatal. In congressional hearings on the Vioxx debacle, senior FDA analyst David Graham warned that the agency puts the priorities of industry above public safety and uses standards that "guarantee that unsafe and deadly drugs will remain on the U.S. market."

Congress is now drafting a bill to prevent conflicts of interest within the FDA.

The EPA has also come under attack in recent years: In 2005 the U.S. Government Accountability Office raised the alarm about corporate sway over the agency.

This spring James Huff, a senior scientist at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, published a blistering attack on the "brazenly overt influence" of industry on both agencies.

All in all, Barlow says, it hardly seems a good time to pursue "regulatory convergence" with the U.S. in everything from pesticide approvals to food safety, as the SPP urges.

Sovereignty:
All three governments as well as the NACC insist that the three nations remain sovereign under the SPP: If Canada doesn't like the way the U.S. does something, it can go its own way.

But Peter Julian is not so sure. He worries about the effect regulatory convergence will have in the future. If, say, Canada wants to pass new rules to deal with greenhouse gases, it could mean "Canada would have to go to Washington and lobby for the kinds of standards and protections they want," he says Interestingly, journalist Andro Linklater put forward the same argument in a New York Times essay last month in order to assure Americans the SPP was no threat to their sovereignty. He noted that "American regulations are the norm for most of the partnership's 24 existing ... agreements covering trade and security."

Recalling the dream of Abraham Lincoln's aide, William Seward, to annex Canada, he wrote:"History is resuming its normal course. It may be slower than invasion or purchase, but the regulations and agencies needed to enforce them will pull Canada and Mexico within the reach of U.S. jurisdiction as effectively as any means Seward envisioned."

Will the Three Amigos ride triumphantly together into the dawn of a new North American era, true partners in security and prosperity, ready to take on terrorist threats and roaring economic rivals? Or will the weaker two just wind up under the boot of Uncle Sam?
Maybe, as Roland Paris sees it, the three friends will just sit around chatting about nothing.

One thing is certain: The fate of North America, and our place in it, has shot into the spotlight with growing public awareness of the SPP, rekindling a wrenching debate about Canada's ties to the superpower to the south.

As with the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement in 1988, and NAFTA six years later, old foes such as Maude Barlow and Thomas d'Aquino are once again facing off; charges of lies, secrecy and even treason are flying from fringe groups on both sides of the border.

It's a déjà-vu the SPP's architects were desperate to avoid, says Stephen Clarkson, a University of Toronto expert on deep integration. "They've been keeping things quiet because they don't want ... (extremists) jumping on their backs."Ironically, that has only made people more suspicious, he says."Citizens have good reason to be upset: This process has little transparency and little accountability, but could produce significant action."The creation of the NACC, which gave an elite body of corporate giants "privileged access to cabinet-level figures," only deepened public distrust, he notes. That's too bad, he says: The SPP has the potential to "elevate Canada and Mexico's position in the world" by putting them higher on the U.S. agenda. "It can be hard to get Washington's attention when they're busy killing themselves in Iraq," he observes wryly.

Even some free-trade fans are calling for a more open discussion: In June, Robert Pastor, a leading U.S. advocate of deep integration, said the air of secrecy surrounding the SPP was fuelling the fears of conspiracy theorists, and called for the debate to be open to civil-society groups, from environmentalists to labour groups.

The issue of Canada's place in North America may be touchy, even explosive, Clarkson says. But it's not a topic we should avoid, or hide behind a "Sears catalogue" of hodge-podge projects like the SPP.
Roland Paris puts it this way:"Where do we want this continent to be 10 to 20 years from now? "We're not really having that discussion.

republicans and democrats who keep telling us the only way we can stop living in fear is to sacrifice freedoms for security.

Overview of the Security and Prosperity Partnership and Implications

The SPP Partnership was founded in Waco, Texas on March 23, 2005 by Paul Martin, Prime Minister of Canada, Vincente Fox, President of Mexico, and George W. Bush, President of the United States. In the first part of a Joint Statement President Bush, President Fox, and Prime Minister Martin said, “We, the elected leaders of Canada, Mexico, and the United States, gather in Texas to announce the establishment of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America."

But the fact is that the SPP is being implemented in secrecy from the electorate of each country and has not been subject to discussion or debate by the elected representatives of each country. The work on the SPP by elected officials is plainly illegal.

Canada and the U.S. have signed an agreement that paves the way for the militaries from either nation to send troops across each other's borders during an emergency, but some are questioning why the Harper government has kept silent on the deal.

Neither the Canadian government nor the Canadian Forces announced the new agreement, which was signed Feb. 14 in Texas.

Free trade only benefits corporations, not populations.