Trilateral partnership sucks Superior?

Saultites could see Lake Superior water shipped off to the United States or Mexico if the trilateral Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) of North America goes through, Federal NDP Trade Critic Peter Julian said here this week.

The agreement, discussed on Tuesday in Montebello, Quebec at a summit meeting involving Prime Minister Stephen Harper, U.S. President George Bush and Mexican President Felipe de Jesús Calderón Hinojosa,is supposed to harmonize policies in the three countries to facilitate trade and encourage a free market.

In reality, the pact is more likely to reduce everyone to the lowest standards available for environmental and safety standards, Julian told a town hall meeting hosted by Sault MP Tony Martin at the Soup Kitchen Community Centre.

Julian compared SPP to the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which he said is bad for too many people in Canada.

What NAFTA does badly, the proposed SPP does worse, he said.

"It's like NAFTA on steriods. Right now, under NAFTA, a company could sue Ontario if it refused to grant a permit to bulk-ship water out of Lake Superior," the NDP trade critic said. "From what we've seen of SPP, it would be much worse."

Julian said Canadians could quickly find themselves in the same position with water supplies as with crude oil, where NAFTA forces us to sell our resources to the United States at a reduced rate, even when we face shortages and have to buy at a higher rate from overseas producers.

The U.S.-stated objective of an SPP Regulatory Cooperation Framework is to improve trilateral cooperation among the governments of the United States, Canada and Mexico, with the principle aims of:

- Lowering costs for North American businesses, producers, governments and consumers.

- Maximizing trade in goods and services across North America's borders.

- Protecting health, safety, and the environment.

Julian, MP for Burnaby-New Westminster, says the real objectives of the SPP are, at best, unclear.

He said there are 19 working groups made up of CEOs from 30 top companies in the three participating nations creating policy recommendations for their governments right now.

But none of their recommendations are being made available to the public.

Julian said that's because the governments know these recommendations will benefit a few people a lot and cost many Canadians a lot more.

After the Montebello summit, an executive summary of the SPP agenda was released that contained a lot of white-out and a few scary facts, he added.

"Documents obtained by the NDP through access-to-information reveal the so-called wide-ranging and dense agenda of the SPP contained discussions of energy integration and the harmonization of standards," said Julian. "Much of the document was censored by the government, including information on energy security and smart and secure borders."

The Canadian web site devoted to SPP says its agenda covers many areas of trade, security and the environment.

"Initiatives under the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) cover areas as diverse as border security, the environment, e-commerce and pandemic influenza management," says the Canadian site.

It goes on to say that SPP officially began when the three leaders of North America agreed at a meeting on March 31, 2006 in Cancun, Mexico, to advance the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) by focusing on five priority areas:

- Strengthening competitiveness.

- Emergency management coordination.

- Cooperation on avian and human pandemic influenza planning.

- Energy security.

- Ensuring smart, secure borders.

Julian said NAFTA has been bad for the majority of Canadians because only the smallest number of Canadians who make the most amount of money in a year have seen their income increase.

"The wealthiest Canadians have seen their income increase by 16 percent since NAFTA was passed," he said. "But upper middle-class Canadians have seen a loss of the equivalent of one week's wages per year, while lower middle class Canadians have lost the equivalent of two weeks' wages per year and the poorest of us have seen a loss of six weeks worth of wages in a year."

Julian said that very few of SPP's agenda points that have been revealed so far actually deal with border crossings or movement of goods.

Most of the points with surrendering control of the ability to legislate and enforce standards in environmental protection, safety and labeling of products including pharmaceutical and food products and management of resources.

One blog that speaks out against SPP focuses on a Mexican manufacturing company's poor safety and environmental record and says that SPP will reduce the rest of North America to that standard of operations for the sake of competition.

Many groups in Canada have also criticized our government's handling of the SPP agenda and the security around SPP meetings.

The United Steelworkers condemned police action at Montebello, also echoing NDP and other calls for an inquiry into the SPP agenda, working groups and process.

"We recognize the need for trade agreements," said Julian. "We just want these talks to take place in the open and involve our elected officials whom we have chosen to represent us."