rabble.ca Canadian federal election blog

No “Hart” left in Security and Prosperity Partnership

By Stuart Trew, Council of Canadians

Michael Hart, a Carleton University political science professor and former trade advisor to the Mulroney government, has an op-ed in this week’s Embassy magazine that gives us a taste of what the deep integration agenda will look like post-federal election. While mostly a sales job for the latest policy agenda out of Carleton’s neoliberal Norman Patterson School of International Affairs, it’s another sign that the Security and Prosperity Partnership – which all parties except the Conservatives have distanced themselves from (or outright opposed) – is on its last legs.

“The Smart Border Accord and the Security and Prosperity Partnership were useful, but limited responses to emerging trade and investment challenges: useful, because of their pragmatic, problem-by-problem approach; limited because they could not commit the Congress, nor the agencies that Congress independently funds and controls, to address issues such as the dysfunctional border or regulatory divergence,” writes Hart in Embassy. “For these reasons, neither proved suitable instruments to provide a secure framework for trade and investment and reinforce the rules and institutions of NAFTA and the WTO.”

It’s a similar message to the one he and Bill Dymond expressed in a C.D. Howe report that came out just before the fourth annual “North American Leaders Summit” in New Orleans this April. Essentially, they argued, Canada should move away from the trilateral SPP model and engage in more meaningful integration with its top trading partner.

Incredibly, Hart now claims: “Historically, there has long existed a broad measure of comfort among Canadians with arranging for the security and prosperity of their country within the North American framework and with seeking new arrangements with the United States to capture and manage the forces of silent integration.”

But we know that today the opposite is more likely true: that despite concerns about slow, or “sticky” borders, there is widespread disapproval to further integration with the United States. The Council of Canadians’ poll from April 2008, Not Counting Canadians, goes along way to proving that Canadians want independent policies (regulatory, foreign and energy),  that are not harmonized versions of Republican priorities.

Similarly, Harper’s claim over the weekend that Canadian politicians and voters once fought “about trade as a good thing” but are now happily “conservative” is ridiculous.

What we continue to debate in this country is whether or not so-called free trade agreements like NAFTA, and its expansion through the Security and Prosperity Partnership, are good for all Canadians, or only a few at the top. NAFTA is less about trade than investor rights, including the right of corporations to sue the Canadian government for policies that interfere with their market interests, even if those policies were designed to protect us or the environment.

The current debate around the economy has touched on this, with Liberal leader Stéphane Dion hinting that market mechanisms are not good enough on their own, while Stephen Harper tells workers in Ontario he can’t help them – the market stole their jobs.

There’s an environmental reason for Canadians to reject Harper’s (and Hart’s) ideological attachment to North American integration.

Gasoline in Canada still contains the toxic chemical MMT because of a NAFTA challenge to the repealed Canada-wide ban by U.S.-based Ethyl Corporation. The out-of-court settlement cost taxpayers $13 million. And just this year, Exxon Mobil and Murphy Oil filed a NAFTA lawsuit against the feds simply because Newfoundland wants these two companies to invest some of their research and development funds locally. It will cost us $60 million if Canada loses.

Canadians recognize how ridiculous this arrangement is. As already stated by this blogger, an Angus Reid poll from July showed that only seven per cent of those surveyed say Canada has benefited the most from NAFTA, and a majority (52 per cent) think we should “do whatever it takes” to renegotiate the agreement.

If Harper truly wanted his Conservative party to rule “in the interests of the broad majority of the population,” as he said this weekend, he’d recognize that the debate on trade is alive and well, and that most Canadians disagree with the Conservative position on NAFTA.

Hart’s prescription for post-election Canada-U.S. relations is just more of the same rejected and failed integration model. It’s the SPP and deep integration in a new package – a package that Hart and his friends will be happy to present to the new Canadian government in December. That’s when he will present the government with a policy-ready document on deep integration – a tool the Harper government endorsed at the close of the New Orleans “leaders summit” this April.

Stuart Trew is the Ontario-Quebec-Nunavut Regional Organizer for the Council of Canadians.