The SPP was founded in March 2005 at a summit of the Heads of State of
Canada, the US, and Mexico with the backing of powerful lobby groups
including US Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), Canadian Council of Chief
Executives (CCCE), and Mexican Council on Foreign Relations. Robert
Pastor, co-chairman of the CFR, wrote an influential book in 2001 "Toward
a North American Community" where he laid the foundations for the SPP
through the idea of "North American institutions". In January 2003, CCCE
released its North American Security and Prosperity Initiative which
essentially became the template for the SPP.
The SPP calls for maximization of North American economic competitiveness
in the face of growing exports from India and China; expedited means of
resource (oil, natural gas, water, forest products) extraction; secure
borders against "organized crime, international terrorism, and illegal
migration"; standardized regulatory regimes for health, food safety, and
the environment; integrated energy supply through a comprehensive
resource security pact (primarily about ensuring that the US receives
guaranteed flows of the oil in light of "Middle East insecurity and
hostile Latin American regimes"); and coordination amongst defence forces.
Unlike other continental free trade agreements, the SPP is not an official
treaty; rather, it is presented as a vague "dialogue based on shared
values". Made operational through nineteen working groups that are outside
the legislative process, the SPP has escaped any public debate.
The North American Competitiveness Council (NACC) is the only formal
advisory board to the SPP and is made up exclusively of corporate CEOs. A
September 13, 2006 story in Maclean's magazine describes the NACC as a
"cherrypicked group of executives who [are being] asked to come up with a
plan for taking North American integration beyond NAFTA." Members
include the CEOs of Manulife Financial, Suncor Energy, Home Depot,
Lockheed Martin, General Electric, and Wal-Mart. The NACC, representing
private corporate interests, has therefore been "institutionalized" as a
policy-making body, thus formalizing the patterns of existing corporate
influence.
POLICIES
Over 300 policies and agreements have been scheduled and/or implemented to
realize these priorities.
One of these is the integration of military and police training exercises,
cooperation on law enforcement, and the expansion of the North American
Aerospace Defense Command into a joint naval and land Defense Command.
This also includes redesign of armed forces for combat overseas and
greater cooperation in global wars as part of the 'external' defense
strategy of the security perimeter.
Moves have also been made towards regional border militarization as part
of the 'internal' security perimeter. In 2001, Canada's Deputy Prime
Minister John Manley and US Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge signed
the Smart Border Declaration, a 30-point plan which includes adoption of
coordinated border surveillance technologies with major contracts provided
to military suppliers. Other initiatives include fly-overs of the border
by U.S. helicopters and a $101-million plan to arm Canadian border guards.
The physical enforcement of such policies has been accompanied by the
implementation of biometric programs, coordination of no-fly lists (the
U.S no-fly list has grown to half a million names), a North American
Border Pass, and increased tracking and intelligence-gathering on foreign
nationals and 'high risk' people. The Canadian Advance Technology Alliance
Biometrics Group has estimated that the biometric market has risen to US
$2.6-billion.
Legislation to restrict the movement of people has extended to the
integration of refugee policies, including information-sharing on asylum
claimants through fingerprint records. In addition, the Safe Third Country
Agreement, implemented in December 2004 between the US and Canada, has
resulted in at least a 40% decrease in refugee applications in Canada.
Notably, this agreement has recently been struck down by the Federal Court
of Canada. Under the United States-Mexico "Voluntary Repatriation Program"
more than 35,000 persons have been deported with increased border
enforcement against Mexican migrants. The SPP also calls for 'sealing' of
the southern Mexico border with Guatemala and Belize through Plan Sur.
This has led to huge profits for corporations involved in the 'Homeland
Security' industries. Indeed, the role of the private sector in security
initiatives was highlighted as one of the priorities at the NACC
Trilateral Private Sector meeting, "As 85% of the United States critical
infrastructure is owned or operated by the private sector, it is vital to
our economic and national security that business is actively involved in
the formulation of homeland security policies". For example, on Sept. 21
2006, Michael Chertoff, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security,
announced that a consortium headed by Boeing had won a multi-billion
dollar contract to install sensors and radars along the U.S. border.
Meanwhile, to facilitate movement of extracted natural resources, good,
and "preferred citizens" around this new North American zone, initiatives
such as the "Business Resumption and Partners in Protection Program" and
the "Fast and Secure Trade Pass" have been designed. Infrastructural
development includes the "NAFTA Superhighway", a several hundred mile-long
corridor including rail lines and pipelines from Mexico to the Canadian
border. Transportation companies such as CN Rail have much to gain; in
Western Canada alone CN plans to invest nearly Cndn $350 million in track
infrastructure. CN Rail and its expansion has been the targets of various
indigenous blockades by communities opposed to the project of
nation-building through infrastructure development that leads to further
expropriation of indigenous lands.
The SPP also calls for rapid expansion of temporary guest worker programs
that are required to ensure cheap labour in light of the repressive
migration and security controls. Canada's Seasonal Agricultural Worker
Program is seen as the 'model' to implement, despite widespread documented
abuse including being tied to the "importing" employer; facing deportation
if workers assert their rights; and exploitative working conditions
including low wages, long hours, substandard housing, and overt
discrimination.
As is evident around the world, militarization is needed to ensure the
goal of privatizing natural resources; in this case the primary targets
being Mexico's nationalized oil sector and tar sands production in
Alberta. The tar sands ("oil sands") are one of the world's largest
petroleum resource basins. Oil sand operations currently produce around
one million barrels a day; for Suncor -- one the corporations on the NACC --
that means daily gross revenue of $6 million. The SPP calls for a fivefold
increase in tar sands production despite the fact that the tar sands have
become the largest contributor to Canada's increase in greenhouse gas
emissions and surrounding indigenous communities have documented high
cancer rates. Carla Lewis of the Wet'suwet'en Nation writes, "Perhaps even
a greater tragedy is occurring as our youth turn knives to their wrists
and guns to their heads, as the loss of land and of cultural continuity
lead to a devastating loss of hope."
Finally, harmonization of health and environmental regulations to lower
standards and a less stringent "North American alternative" to the Kyoto
Protocol are core features of the SPP. Recently, for example, a new U.S.
Food and Drug Administration report claims that meat and milk from cloned
animals is safe and it is expected that Canada and Mexico will follow suit
under the SPP "food safety coordinating mechanism". Similarly, in 2007,
Canada raised its limits on pesticide residues on fruits and vegetables in
order to harmonize levels with that of the US, despite the greater health
risk.
NAFTA ON STEROIDS
The SPP is premised on a particular articulation of "neoliberal economic
freedom", which is constituted through practices such as biometric
pre-clearance programs, the liberalization of rules-of-origins under
NAFTA, and the development of trilateral policy frameworks to enhance
freer movement of goods, capital, and electronic commerce. The exceptional
freedom and mobility of corporations and businesspeople is dramatically
contrasted with proliferating restrictions imposed on marginalized
communities. Ironically, border controls are deployed against those whose
very recourse to "illegal" migration resulted from the license afforded by
free trade agreements to corporations to ravage entire economies and
displace entire communities in the South. Similarly, the focus on resource
extraction and development in the SPP will work to further dispossess and
displace indigenous communities.
Neoliberalism is intensified in the SPP through an increased reliance on
labor flexibility as a means of increasing profits; for example by
undermining labor laws through employment of contract and part-time labor,
as well as through the enforcement of exclusionary citizenship through
Temporary Foreign Worker Programs. The expansion of guest worker programs
allows for capital interests to increasingly access cheap labour that
exists under precarious conditions, the most severe of which is the
condition of being deportable. Given their unstable legal status,
government and businesses are able to hyper-exploit migrant workers by
denying them basic rights afforded to citizens. They also maintain the
sanctity of the fortified national security apparatus and the racist
regime of border imperialism by legalizing the 'foreign-ness' of migrant
workers.
HOMELAND SECURITY PLUS
Pastor stated in an interview with Poder y Negocios, "The 9/11 crisis made
Canada and the United States redefine the protection of their borders...
What I'm saying is that a crisis is an event which can force democratic
governments to make difficult decisions like those that will be required
to create a North American Community."
It is fundamental to understand this relationship between the SPP and
notions of "Catastrophic Emergency", to which security policies are tied.
In 2006, as part of the SPP, the Department of Homeland Security awarded a
$385 million dollar contract to KBR, a Halliburton subsidiary, to support
"Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities in the event of an
emergency", including detention facilities in the event of an "immigration
emergency." In the post 911 climate, the construction of a constant
imminent threat to North America is a critical condition for the SPP and
the justification for increased security measures; however, the
implementation of these measures must not interfere with its economic
hegemony.
Here we find the crucial relationship between security and prosperity: not
only does the SPP facilitate the exceptional mobility of economic goods
including through "Resource Security" regimes (especially ensuring access
to oil through the Energy Security Pact); it also subsidizes production
through state-sanctioned indentured labour programs (i.e migrant workers).
These initiatives are paralleled by security measures that demobilize and
marginalize racialized populations. The actual "criminal" or "terroristic"
deeds of "high-risk" individuals never has to be proven; their
transgression of the white colonial boundaries are sufficient sources of
insecurity, as such the SPP increases state militancy in deporting
"illegals" as a means of social discipline.
RESISTING THE SPP
A radical contestation of the SPP requires us to think and act beyond the
state to avoid calling for the expansion of state control as a means of
counter-acting corporate expansion. Instead, we need to recognize the
state itself, particularly in North America, as a fundamentally
repressive, racist, and colonial site that remains indispensable for the
perpetuation of capitalist exploitation. Despite the image that
neoliberalism has constructed for itself as autonomous from the state, it
is in fact heavily reliant on the state to regulate a deeply racialized
and gendered labour market on behalf of corporations.
State power has been most markedly deployed in the policing of territorial
borders and the project of imperialist occupation; in shaping the
population's productivity through the power to grant or withhold
citizenship; in expropriating indigenous lands and resources for economic
development; and finally, in protecting exploitative social and class
relations. Therefore critics are mistaken in their assessment of declining
state power; indeed, state power articulated strongly in the military
adventures and societal securitization explicitly endorsed by the SPP.
While the SPP poses a formidable challenge, it also provides an
opportunity to build a wider movement of resistance that can transcend the
systemic exclusions produced by nationalism, Western imperialism, white
supremacy and global capitalism. Instead, an explicitly anti-colonial,
anti-racist, and anti-capitalist resistance constitutes the possibility
for re-imagining community beyond the bounds of citizenship; the political
beyond the state; freedom beyond the market; and humanity beyond
Whiteness.
- Harsha Walia is a South Asian activist in a range of social movements.
Cynthia Oka is a no-border activist and a Political Science student. They
are both members of No One Is Illegal-Vancouver, Coast Salish territories.
