Showing posts with label CFR. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CFR. Show all posts

Friday, June 16, 2006

Sinking Atlantica


The “Reaching Atlantica: Business Without Borders” conference just wrapped up last weekend. It's an Atlantic Provinces Chamber of Commerce proposal to expand economic and political links between the Maritimes and the Northeastern US, and it kind of makes sense when you look at the map, doesn't it? Atlantic Canada plus Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York state and part of northern Massachusetts.
In fact the front page of the Atlantica website states :
"After the Americans rejected Reciprocity and Confederation was born, the continent was divided into two national projects...in 1867."
If this sounds like an unusual reading of history to Canadian ears, it may be because the VP soon-to-be-President of the Atlantic Provinces Chamber of Commerce is an American and the CEO of Eastern Maine Development Corp.
And while there are many alarming references to minimum wage legislation, size of public employee workforce and “union density” as barriers to “Labour Market Flexibility” and “Public Sector Efficiency”, it is in the Atlantica Media pages that they really get down to it :
"If the vision of Atlantica could be realized, it would be a wonderful facilitator toward restoring Atlantic Canada's heritage as a thriving centre of international trade, but even better would be to integrate all of Canada and the U.S. inside one big continental economic and security zone, which would also eliminate the looming problem of American passport controls at the border which former Ambassador to the U.S. Frank McKenna estimated as potentially causing a reduction of up to 7.7 million visitors to Canada, and losses of nearly $2 billion annually - mainly from the tourism industry.
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The ideal solution would be a European Union-style "perimeter" that would allow Canada and the U.S. to jointly manage common external border entry points while largely dismantling internal border restrictions. Last year, an independent task force sponsored by the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, of which former Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Affairs Minister John Manley is a co-chair, recommended that Canada, the United States and Mexico become a single trading zone. This is so logical that it should be a no-brainer, but resistance from the above-mentioned "usual suspects" is of course a given."
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I'm sorry, who were those usual suspects you mentioned again?
Ah yes, here it is :"the usual suspects - unions, rabid ultranationalists like the Council of Canadians, radical feminists, and other fellow-traveling leftist flat-earthers"
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Dear Atlantica : While your proposal is generally well researched and adequately reasoned, in your list of usual suspects you refer to "fellow-travelling leftist flat-earthers" when the more usual designation of "godless tree-hugging Commie fags" would be more consistent with the rest of your material.

Thursday, January 12, 2006

The Wacko Waco Pact

Schwartzman suggests in the comments that a follow-up is needed as to what happened as a result of 'The Task Force on the Future of North America' (see below). He recommends this from The Council of Canadians website.
I'll wait here while you go read it.
Go on - it's really short.
It's a pact called 'The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America' (SPP), and was signed by Canada PM Paul Martin, Mexico President Vicente Fox, and US President George Bush on March 23, 2005 in Waco, Texas. It reads like a slightly more anemic version of the Task Force on the Future of NA.
No one paid much attention to it at the time, as this was the same day that the media was clogged with the spectacle of Crusader Bunnypants criss-crossing the nation, pen in hand, to save the brain-dead Terri Schiavo from slipping through the fingers of the christian right into a dignified death.

But maybe you think The Council of Canadians, a watchdog group which has written extensively against "deep integration" with the US, is acting like The Council of Chicken Little here.
Given that it was the Canadian Council of Chief Executives who first launched this whole initiative in 2003, perhaps it would be a better idea to go to their website and see what they themselves have to say about it :

Task Force Report Emphasizes Need for Urgent Action on North American Security and Prosperity
"The final report of the Independent Task Force on the Future of North America adds momentum to the trinational security and prosperity initiative launched recently by the leaders of the United States, Mexico and Canada, says the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE).
Sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and composed of 26 leading figures from government, academia, business and the non-profit sector, the Task Force strongly endorses the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) announced at the March 23 summit in Texas, and proposes building on and extending that initiative by creating a new community by 2010 with a single market, common external tariff, and an outer security perimeter.
In January 2003, the CCCE embarked on a multi-year project to develop a strategy for shaping Canada's future within North America and beyond. In launching its North American Security and Prosperity Initiative (NASPI), the CCCE said that a Canadian strategy for managing its future within the continent should be based on five pillars: reinventing borders; regulatory efficiency; resource security; the North American defence alliance; and new institutions. All five areas are addressed in the final report of the CFR-sponsored Task Force."

Well of course they like it - they wrote it.
It's their very own "Chickens For Colonel Sanders" campaign.
Quislings.