Document reveals plan for meeting of U.S., Mexico, Canada leaders
Pastor Dale Morgan
*Document reveals plan for meeting of U.S., Mexico, Canada leaders*
Posted: July 25, 2007
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.
President Bush, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexico's President
Felipe Calderon will attend the third SPP summit.
The Security and Prosperity Partnership is unveiled in Jerome Corsi's
book, 'The Late, Great USA'
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:
* Strengthening Competitiveness
* Avian and Pandemic Influenza
* Emergency Management
* Energy Security
* Secure Borders
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."
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.
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.
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.