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What is the World Coming To, if You Cannot Count on SNOPES???

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Entitled “Building a North American Community,” the report offered a blueprint of the goals that the three countries of North America should pursue and the steps needed to achieve these goals.

The CFR report, under Robert Pastor’s direction, recommended expanding the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) into a North American military command, creating a North American Development Fund to help pay for Mexico’s economic development, establishing a North American Union Court to resolve disputes, establishing a North American Advisory Council to serve as the NAU executive branch, and creating a North American Inter-Parliamentary Group to act as NAU lawmaker.

These recommendations derive directly from Robert Pastor’s many published books and papers, as well as his extensive professional testimony to Congress and groups such as the Tri-Lateral Commission. His most comprehensive statement of his views on creating the NAU by transforming NAFTA into a political entity were expressed in his 2001 book, "Toward a North American Community", where he also advocated the creation of a common NAU currency, the Amero, as first proposed by Canadian economist Herbert Grubel.”

The SPP also established the North American Competitiveness Council (NACC) at its second summit, held in Cancún, Quintana Roo, Mexico, in March 2006. This council is composed of 30 corporate representatives from some of North America's largest companies. Its mandate is to set priorities for the SPP and maintain the drive for NAU integration through successive changes in government in all three countries. The creation of the NACC only one year after the announcement of the SPP is also a tangible outcome is it not?

Some of the following information about the NACC is publicly available on Wikipedia verbatim and some I’ve paraphrased. As noted, some linked documents have been removed from the Council of the Americas website.

The North American Competitiveness Council was officially born on March 31, 2006 at the second annual summit of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America. The NACC was officially launched on June 15, 2006 at a joint press conference held by Carlos Gutierrez, Mexican Economy Minister Sergio García de Alba and Canadian Industry Minister Maxime Bernier.

Unflattering(?) accounts of the meetings, NACC3.pdf and NACC June 15 Post Ministerial Report.pdf, from the Council of the Americas have since been removed from their website. At these meetings attendees purportedly discussed "marrying policy issues with business priorities", the "active engagement of the North American business community", and the purpose of institutionalizing the North American business community's involvement in the SPP process, in order "so that the work will continue through changes in administrations." The NACC will make sure that, "governments look to the private sector to tell them what needs to be done." According to a Canadian press release, the NACC "has a mandate to provide governments with recommendations on broad issues such as border facilitation and regulation, as well as the competitiveness of key sectors including automotive, transportation, manufacturing and services."

The NACC met again in Washington, D.C., on August 15, 2006. The meeting was chaired by Ron Covais, President of the Americas for Lockheed Martin, and was co-hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Council of the Americas – both U.S. NACC co-secretariats. The U.S. business leaders outlined their key priorities as "standards and regulatory cooperation, border security and infrastructure, supply chain management, energy integration, innovation, and external dimensions," but the NACC as a whole eventually agreed on three overall priorities: border crossing facilitation (to be handled by the Canadian NACC members), regulatory convergence (to be handled by the U.S. NACC) and energy integration, which the Mexican NACC members would handle.

The North American Competitiveness Council met with SPP ministers for the first time on February 23, 2007 in Ottawa. At that meeting, the business council released a preliminary report containing over 50 recommendations for continental integration, including a North American resource pact and intensified regulatory convergence between all three countries.

On July 26, 2007, the conservative, non-partisan U.S. government watchdog Judicial Watch notified Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez that it was seeking access to the meetings and records of the North American Competitiveness Council (NACC) under the provisions of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) – the federal open meetings law (5 U.S.C App. 2 §3(2)). "Specifically," said Judicial Watch in a press release, the group, "seeks to attend and/or participate in meetings of the NACC and its U.S. component subcommittees."

The NACC met again with SPP ministers and NAFTA leaders on August 21, 2007, at the Chateau Montebello hotel in Quebec, Canada. It was the only non-governmental organization with full access to the meeting, the third Security and Prosperity Partnership Leaders Summit since March 2005. The group of CEOs released another report praising the Canadian, Mexican and U.S. governments for moving quickly on NACC recommendations for a North American Regulatory Cooperation Framework and Intellectual Property Action Plan. The NACC report explained that the group is prepared, "to move beyond our initial report" and would be "pleased to engage on other strategic issues affecting the competitiveness and security of the North American economies."

Until the February 23, 2007 NACC/SPP meeting in Ottawa, there had been very little media coverage of the North American Competitiveness Council, its mandate or its meetings. In fact, the only mainstream North American source to write about the NACC has been Canada's Maclean's magazine, which ran a story on September 13 by Luiza Savage called "Meet NAFTA 2.0."

Savage described the NACC as a "cherry-picked group of executives who were whisked to Cancun in March by the leaders of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, and asked to come up with a plan for taking North American integration beyond NAFTA."

Ron Covais of Lockheed Martin told Savage that, "The guidance from the ministers was, 'tell us what we need to do and we'll make it happen,'" and that rather than going through the legislative process in any country, the Security and Prosperity Partnership must be implemented in incremental changes by executive agencies, bureaucrats and regulators. "We've decided not to recommend any things that would require legislative changes," Covais tells Savage, "because we won't get anywhere."

Despite a lack of in-depth information about the NACC, opposition to it in both the U.S. and Canada has focused on the fact that it grants the corporate sector a formal role in the Security and Prosperity Partnership which has thus far been denied to the public, citizens organizations, labour and many legislators, who are still in the dark about the continental pact. In Canada, the Council of Canadians has run several articles about the NACC in its publication, Canadian Perspectives. The citizens organization is calling for the corporate body to be disbanded, and for the Security and Prosperity Partnership to be brought to the Canadian Parliament for a full legislative debate.

Finally, why was this Resolution put forward in Congress on January 22, 2007 saying “…the formation of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) on March 23, 2005, representing a tri-lateral agreement between the United States, Canada, and Mexico…”? Notice they called it an agreement. If there is no Government plan underway for a North American Union, and no agreement, then why does this resolution call for a stop to NAU and the activities of the SPP???

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Merchant marine experience on ocean research and oil exploration vessels in my youth. Ex-mechanical engineer, oil exploration equipment industry, commercial and military aerospace industries, SCUBA diving and respiratory protective breathing (more...)
 

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