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 The SPP and corporate power“Imaginary citizens” and the democratic decit of deep integration

The purpose of governments is to create the environment necessary for business to prosper… The North

 American Competitiveness Council will help in that endeavor and the governments look to the private sector

to tell them what needs to be done.

~ U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez speaking at the launch of the CEO-based North American

Competitiveness Council (NACC) in Washington, D.C., June 15, 2006

This group should drive change.

~ Anonymous Canadian business leader referring to the NACC

It’s safe to say that governments are about much more than creating “the environment for business to

prosper.” In fact, one of the main responsibilities of good government is to check the corporate prot motive

against more important goals like protecting public health and the environment. Unfortunately, the Security

and Prosperity Partnership has more to do with protecting corporate prots from pesky public demands (for 

a cleaner environment and safer food for instance). That’s why the public has been shut out of the SPP

process entirely while North America’s richest CEOs have a permanent seat at the table. This “silent coup

d’état,” in the words of the North-South Institute’s John Foster, has been a long time in the making.

From free trade to free reignMultinational corporations have promoted the same agenda for over 20 years: small governments, low taxes

for business, privatization, and free trade. The Canadian government has been happy to oblige, often im-

plementing policy recommendations taken directly from the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE),

a lobby group made up of 150 CEOs from the most protable corporations in Canada (many of which are

American-owned branch plants). For instance, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and its

Canada-U.S. predecessor, the FTA, were developed mostly at the request of big corporations – and for their 

benet.

History has a tendency to repeat itself. In 2003, the CCCE initiated a corporate brainstorming session called

“The North American Security and Prosperity Initiative.” Out of this process emerged plans for a North Amer-

ican security perimeter, economic integration, and harmonization of several public policies with the United

States. In March 2005, leaders in Canada, Mexico and the U.S. integrated almost all of the CCCE’s ideasinto a new “Partnership” (the SPP). For the past two years, cross-border working groups have been putting

the SPP into effect without asking any of us how we feel about it. Actually, U.S. ofcials recently admitted to

the Council of Canadians that omitting the public is intentional because they want to avoid another “bruising

NAFTA battle.”

Meetings for business onlyThe SPP decision-making process is described ofcially this way: “meetings” for business, “roundtables”

for stakeholders and “briengs sessions” for Parliament. In other words, business people set priorities for 

the continent, then they “consult” with stakeholders, whoever they are, and then our democratically elected

Members of Parliament are told what to do. This relationship was conrmed in a September 2006 article in

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