- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice with her counterparts,
Canadian Foreign Minister Peter MacKay and Mexican Foreign Minister Patricia
Espinosa at February meeting
-
- A multinational business agenda is driving the upcoming
summit meeting of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America,
according to a document obtained through an Access to Information Act request
in Canada.
-
- The memo shows a secondary focus of the leaders' meeting
in Montebello, Quebec, Aug. 20-21, will be to prepare for a continental
avian flu or human pandemic and establish a permanent continental emergency
management coordinating body to deal not only with health emergencies but
other unspecified emergencies as well.
-
- As WND has reported, President Bush, Prime Minister Stephen
Harper and Mexico's President Felipe Calderon will attend the third SPP
summit.
-
- The document, obtained by Canadian private citizen Chris
Harder, is a two-page heavily redacted summary of the ministerial meeting
in Ottawa, held Feb. 23 between Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and
her counterparts, Canadian Foreign Minister Peter MacKay and Mexican Foreign
Minister Patricia Espinosa.
-
- The purpose of the Feb. 23 meeting in Ottawa was to set
the agenda for the August summit.
-
- The Access to Information Act-obtained memo noted the
nation's leaders intend next month to pursue the five priorities set at
their second summit meeting in Cancun in March 2005:
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- Strengthening Competitiveness
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- Avian and Pandemic Influenza
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- Emergency Management
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- Energy Security
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- Secure Borders
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- Of the five issues, the memo clearly states recommendations
by the North American Competitiveness Council, or NACC, regarding competitiveness
"took centerpiece" at the Feb. 23 meeting. Almost immediately,
the memo says, governments "will need to begin assessing the potential
impact of adopting recommendations made by the NACC and coordinating their
response to the authors of the report."
-
- The memo states "the most dynamic element on the
plenary agenda was a meeting with the NACC, the body created by the Leaders
in 2006 to give the private sector a formal role in providing advice on
how to enhance competitiveness in North America."
-
- The NACC consists of 30 multinational business corporations
that advise SPP and set the action agenda for its 20 trilateral bureaucratic
working groups.
-
- The memo notes the NACC was created by the leaders in
2006 "to give the private sector a formal role in providing advice
on how to enhance competitiveness in North America."
-
- According to the memo, the NACC made recommendations
in three areas: border-crossing facilitation, standards and regulatory
cooperation, and energy integration.
-
- The memo suggested NACC members were getting impatient,
charging the speed of SPP regulatory change was too slow. The members complained
of "the private sector's seeming inability to influence the pace of
regulatory change 'from the bottom up.'"
-
- "Some NACC representatives," the memo comments,
"felt that direct signals from ministers were required if work was
to advance at a pace rapid enough to address challenges from more dynamic
international competitors particularly China. The subtext was clear:
In the absence of ministerial endorsement, bureaucracies are unlikely to
act on the more challenging recommendations."
-
- The memo noted the ministers agreed at their Feb. 23
meeting to finalize by June a plan to create a coordinating body to prepare
for the "North American response to an outbreak of avian or pandemic
influenza." The leaders are expected to finalize the plan at the August
summit.
-
- The memo also reported ministers agreed to create a coordinating
body on emergency management similar to that set up for avian or pandemic
flu. The governance structure of coordinating body was also scheduled for
completion in June, so it could be presented to the leaders for final approval
at the August summit.
-
- A comment at the end of the memo said the ministers at
their Feb. 23 meeting "acknowledged that the SPP was largely unknown
or misunderstood and needed to be better communicated beyond the officials
and the business groups involved."
-
- WND has reported that as many as 10,000 protesters plan
to assemble in Quebec to show opposition to the summit.
-
- The Corbett Report, a Canadian blog that first reported
on the memo obtained by Harder, noted the term "Security and Prosperity"
was first used by the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, or CCOCE, in
a Jan. 23, 2003, report entitled, "Security and Prosperity: Toward
a New Canada-United States Partnership in North America."
-
- CCOCE's membership consists of 150 of Canada's leading
businesses. In the U.S., the Chamber of Commerce would be considered a
counterpart.
-
- WND previously reported on National Security Presidential
Directive No. 51 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive No. 20, which
allocate to the office of the president the authority to direct all levels
of government in the event he declares a national emergency.
-
- WND also has previously reported that under SPP, the
military of the U.S. and Canada are turning USNORTHCOM into a domestic
military command structure, with authority extending to Mexico, even though
Mexico has not formally joined with the current U.S.-Canadian USNORTHCOM
command structure.
-
- The Security and Prosperity Partnership is unveiled in
Jerome Corsi's book, 'The Late, Great USA'
-
- Jerome R. Corsi is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Global Research Articles by Jerome R. Corsi
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