Canadian Council of Chief Executives Establishes CEO Action Group to Drive North American Initiative

April 3, 2003

The Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE) has established a 30-member CEO Action Group on North American Security and Prosperity.

This group of chief executives from leading Canadian enterprises will drive the North American Security and Prosperity Initiative launched by the Council in January 2003. Among the members of the Council’s CEO Action Group are: Derek Burney, President and Chief Executive Officer, CAE; Tony Comper, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, BMO Financial Group; Travis Engen, President and Chief Executive Officer, Alcan Inc.; Michael Grimaldi, President, General Motors of Canada Limited; Hal Kvisle, President and Chief Executive Officer, TransCanada PipeLines Limited; Jacques Lamarre, President and Chief Executive Officer, SNC-LAVALIN Group Inc.; Ronald N. Mannix, Chairman, Coril Holdings Ltd.; Gwyn Morgan, President and Chief Executive Officer, EnCana Corporation; Don Pether, Chief Executive Officer Designate, Dofasco Inc; and Robert J. Ritchie, President and Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Pacific Railway.

“Terrorism on a global scale has created significant risks to the global economy and security, including risks to the flows of people and goods within North America,” said CCCE President and Chief Executive, Thomas d’Aquino. “It is therefore more important than ever for business and political leaders in Canada and the United States to work together closely in developing longer-term strategies for enhancing the physical and economic security of all North Americans.”

The CEO Action Group will begin its work at the Council’s Spring Members’ Meeting in Washington, D.C. on April 7-8, 2003. The meeting, which will involve more than 100 of the Council’s member CEOs and invited guests, will include sessions with:

• The Honorable Andrew Card Jr., Chief of Staff to United States President George W. Bush;
• United States Secretary of Homeland Security, Thomas Ridge;
• Democratic Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York;
• Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance John Manley; and
• Bank of Canada Governor David Dodge.

Other speakers will include Canadian Ambassador to the United States Michael Kergin and United States Ambassador to Canada Paul Cellucci, as well as former Canadian ambassador Derek Burney, President and Chief Executive of CAE, and three former United States ambassadors to Canada: James Blanchard, Partner, Piper Rudnick; Gordon Giffin, Vice-Chairman, McKenna Long & Aldridge; and Thomas Niles, President, United States Council for International Business.

Also on the agenda are a number of experts and opinion leaders, including General Wesley K. Clark (Ret.), former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe; Richard Perle, member of the Defense Policy Board; Thomas F. (Mack) McLarty III, former Chief of Staff to President Bill Clinton; economist David Hale; and Joseph Jockel, Director, Canadian Studies Program, St. Lawrence University and Senior Associate, Americas Program, The Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The discussions in Washington will not be limited to the Canada – United States relationship. Business leaders from Canada, the United States and Mexico also will address the broader North American challenge. Participants will include John Castellani, President of the United States Business Roundtable, and Juan Gallardo, Chairman of Grupo Embotelladoras Unidas, S.A. de C.V. and Member of the Board of the Consejo Mexicano de Hombres de Negocios (Mexican Business Council).

The Washington meeting will be the first opportunity for the members of the Council and its CEO Action Group to gauge American interest in its North American initiative, whose goal is to move bilateral discussion beyond incremental improvements in managing borders.

“North American economic integration is well advanced and irreversible and now, in the face of global terrorism, the economic and physical security of the continent are indivisible,” said Mr. d’Aquino. “Canada and the United States should take the lead, in consultation with Mexico – in developing a new paradigm for North American co-operation – a paradigm based on respect for sovereignty while achieving more effective and mutually beneficial interdependence.”

Further information and questions and answers about the North American Security and Prosperity Initiative is now available at www.ceocouncil.ca. The initiative calls for action on five fronts:

• Reinventing borders by eliminating as many as possible of the barriers to the movement of people and goods across the internal border and by shifting the emphasis to protection of the approaches to North America;
• Maximizing economic efficiencies, primarily through harmonization or mutual recognition across a wide range of regulatory regimes;
• Negotiation of a comprehensive resource security pact, covering agriculture and forest products as well as energy, metals and minerals, based on the two core principles of open markets and regulatory compatibility;
• Sharing the burden of defence and security, so that each country is capable both of defending its own territory and of making a meaningful contribution to ensuring continental and global security; and
• Creating a new institutional framework based not on the European model but on cooperation with mutual respect for sovereignty, perhaps using joint commission models to foster co-ordination and to prevent and resolve conflicts.

The Canadian Council of Chief Executives, composed of the chief executive officers of 150 leading Canadian corporations, was known as the Business Council on National Issues until late 2001. Its members head companies that administer in excess of $2.1 trillion in assets, have annual revenues of more than $500 billion and account for a significant majority of Canada’s private sector investment, exports, training and research and development.