Reply #34: Tony Snow: 'A North American Union with a common currency is urban legend.' [View All]

.....the “Security and Prosperity Partnership Ministerial Meeting” in Canada today is a subject worthy of some attention from our major media. It springs from a process, set in motion by President Bush about two years ago, involving what many conservatives see as surrender of U.S. sovereignty to a trilateral entity that could assume the form of a North American Union, much like the European Union that now dictates to the citizens of 27 European states.


“The Security and Prosperity Partnership was launched in 2005 to ensure continued economic prosperity in Canada, the United States and Mexico, and to increase the security of citizens in all three countries,” says a release from the Canadian government.
It sounds innocent enough. Those in attendance are supposed to include, from the government of Canada: Peter MacKay, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, Stockwell Day, Minister of Public Safety, and Maxime Bernier, Minister of Industry.
Their Mexican and U.S. counterparts are Secretary of Foreign Affairs Patricia Espinosa, Secretary of the Interior Francisco Javier Ramírez Acuña, Secretary of Economy Eduardo Sojo Garza-Aldape, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, and Secretary of Commerce Carlos M. Gutierrez.


The Canadian government says that a “media availability” will be held so that photographs can be taken and a few questions asked of the various officials. My question would be: what is the legal basis for the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP)? My research can find no legal basis for this complicated process, now about two years old, involving the futures of our three countries. ......
A Canadian report describes the SPP as “an international framework for trilateral and bilateral cooperation in North America” that is “not a formal international treaty” or “an overarching binding legal agreement.” But what is an “international framework” that commits U.S. officials from various federal agencies to working with officials of two other countries? Why is such a process not subjected to congressional scrutiny and approval?


It sounds suspiciously like the “non-binding resolution” that the House passed opposing President Bush's policy in Iraq, except for the fact that, on the basis of this allegedly unsigned SPP document, federal officials have entered into other agreements with the governments of Mexico and Canada which have been signed. In other words, this is a non-binding agreement or announcement that has binding consequences on the American people.
The SPP refers, for example, to a “signed” agreement with Mexico on consumer goods and a “signed” agreement with Canada on pipeline regulations. They are described by the SPP as “accomplishments.” Who signed these documents? It doesn't say. Why should they be signed when the original agreement creating the SPP is not? It doesn't explain.

White House spokesman Tony Snow has cavalierly dismissed concerns about this process, saying the charge that the U.S. is being submerged in a North American Union and developing a common currency with Canada and Mexico is an “urban legend.”

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