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Putting “Deep Integration” into Practice: The Liberals’ First Action Plan for Harmonization

On June 27, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Anne McLellan announced that Canada will be participating in a new “security and prosperity” plan with both the U.S. and Mexico to further synchronize a number of policies and procedures between the three countries. The plan was developed following the March 23 summit meeting of George W. Bush, Vicente Fox and Paul Martin in Waco, Texas, at which they agreed to look at further integrating North America under the title Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America.

This is the first in a series of action plans to be developed under this partnership and contains sweeping recommendations on everything from increasing shared policing and security services, to removing some of the barriers to cross boarder trade, to synchronizing regulatory systems in the three countries. Many of the recommendations in the plan on their own constitute a fundamental weakening of Canadian sovereignty; together, the plan goes farther than anything since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to subvert Canadian laws and systems.

Under the banner of “Making North America the Best Place to do Business”, the plan commits the three countries to streamlining their regulatory processes to improve the ability of companies to manufacture or sell goods on a North America-wide basis. For example, a trilateral Regulatory Cooperation Framework will be developed to “encourage new cooperation among regulators, including at the outset of the regulatory process … [and] reduce redundant testing and certification requirements, while maintaining high standards of health and safety.” This will have a significant impact, particularly in Canada, which has much stricter regulatory systems in place for almost every consumer good than either the U.S. or Mexico. Drug approvals, for example, routinely take much longer in Canada than in the U.S. and Mexico. Food multinationals like Cargill and ConAgra are not required to publish as much information about their products in the U.S. and Mexico as they are in Canada. Labour and environmental regulations in the three countries vary widely from industry to industry, with some parts of both the U.S. and Mexico operating as regulatory-free zones. The maximum number of hours workers can work in a week is much lower in Canada than in parts of the U.S. or Mexico. There are more stringent health and safety workplace requirements in Canada. These are just some of the hundreds of examples of these differences, but the aim of the plan is clear: eliminate them.

Under the heading “Security” the action plan describes how Canadian, Mexican and American security agencies will work more closely together to identify potential risks. This will include sharing intelligence information and creating even more trilateral security service teams. In addition, the plan commits both Canada and Mexico to develop systems that “prevent high-risk travelers from coming to North America, and facilitate legitimate travel to and within North America, by enhancing our ability to verify traveller identities.”

This section is an apparent reference to a new American policy which requires every airline company in the world to provide its passenger lists to the U.S. government if its airplane will be landing in the U.S or even flying in U.S. airspace. A number of global commercial airlines had been refusing to comply with this policy, asking the U.S. instead to provide them with lists of wanted criminals so they could vet their own passenger lists, but the Americans refused. The U.S. government has compiled a huge “no-fly” list which contains the names of individuals who have no connection to terrorist organizations, but who are active in various protest movements against U.S. government policies, such as the anti-war movement. The harmonization of Canadian and Mexican policies on this front will mean that the U.S. will be able to prevent Canadian and Mexican citizens from flying within their own countries or to third countries, regardless of whether or not their flights cross over U.S. air space.

Other security measures in the plan include:

· establishing a North American biometrics standard for screening all travellers (ie., fingerprinting and eye scanning all entrants not just to the U.S. but to Canada and Mexico as well).

· “negotiating terrorist screening information agreements and examining other appropriate linkages” between the three countries;

· “completing the negotiation of the Canada-U.S. visa information sharing agreement within 18 months”;

· harmonizing border security screening measures, which would require Canadian and Mexican border guards to require the same information from travellers as American border guards require;

· “developing a comprehensive law enforcement strategy to respond to transnational terrorist incidents in North America”; and

· “ensuring interoperability of communications systems used in response operations”.

Despite considerable evidence to the contrary, McLellan dismissed as “ill-informed alarmist rhetoric” concerns that the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America threatens Canadian sovereignty. When asked by reporters what measures the Canadian government would take to ensure that intelligence information provided to the U.S. will not be used to violate the fundamental human rights of Canadian citizens, as happened in the case of Maher Arar, McLellan cited the 2004 Monterrey Protocol. Under this protocol, each country is supposed to consult the other before any of its citizens are deported to a third country. However, the Monterrey Protocol is not legally binding on either Canada or the U.S. Furthermore, U.S. officials have made it clear on a number of occasions that American “national security interests” take precedence over any international agreements the U.S. may have entered into, including the Geneva Accords.

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