The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
NAFTA leaders and their big business counterparts gathered in New Orleans this week for the fourth North American Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) summit. The SPP was conceived by business and political elites as a vehicle for expanding and deepening the North American integration process entrenched under the NAFTA model. The SPP is the umbrella under which hundreds of trilateral initiatives have been assembled. Legions of bureaucrats work diligently on trilateral accords, understandings, protocols, etc. Under the SPP process, information is scarce. There is no public input or access to decisions made behind closed doors. They may pop up eventually as domestic policy measures, but nothing would identify them as SPP-related initiatives. Some commentators say the SPP has not achieved much. But how does one evaluate the results of a project about which so little is known? Without this knowledge, the cumulative effect of many small steps may indeed be hugely significant on CanadiansÕ health and safety, environment and civil liberties. The following example may shed some light on the SPP. The US national energy security strategy calls for grabbing as much Canadian oil as it can. The Alberta government, with the Harper governmentÕs blessing, has ramped up tar sands production to accommodate US demand. The SPP role is to help reduce regulatory barriers that stand in the way of getting the product to US markets quickly. Bilateral pipeline agreements have been signed; understandings have been reached on regulatory approvals, environmental assessments, etc. Little is known about these accords. However, we do know that the National Energy Board recently approved the construction of two massive pipelines to carry raw bitumen from the tar sands to the US. Together their capacity exceeds the total volume of AlbertaÕs 2006 oil exports. This raises important questions: Why is Canada accelerating the export of this most polluting of fuels that is single-handedly preventing Canada from meeting its international commitments to reduce greenhouse gases? Why in the name of Canadian energy security are no pipelines being built to eastern Canada, which is heavily dependent on imported oil? Canadians and their elected representatives deserve to know what is going on at these SPP tables.
