The policy menu at Texas summit needs red meat, not thin gruel

March 21, 2005

The following article appeared in the March 21, 2005, issue of The Hill Times.

By David Stewart-Patterson

When Prime Minister Paul Martin sits down to lunch this week with Mexican President Vicente Fox and United States President George W. Bush at the latter’s ranch in Texas, the food surely will be superb.  But what is on the policy menu is the future shape of North America, and the central question is whether the summit produces good red meat or thin gruel.

Last week, an independent tri-national task force organized by the influential Council on Foreign Relations laid out some appetizing possibilities.  The task force, made up predominantly of leading figures in public life and academia together with people from the private and non-profit sectors, is chaired by former deputy prime minister John Manley, former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld and former Mexican finance minister Pedro Aspe.

The task force chairs have proposed a bold vision for the creation by 2010 of a North American community defined by both a common economic space and a shared zone of security.  Their recommendations encompassed a North American border action plan and an economic agenda that would include a common external tariff, a continental energy strategy and an aggressive strategy for accelerating Mexico’s economic growth.

The objections to such a comprehensive vision range from the pragmatic to the ludicrous.  On the pragmatic end of the scale are politically sensitive and highly protected sectors in each country and short-term constraints like a minority parliament.  At the other end lie the scare-mongers like the Council of Canadians and Murray Dobbin, who wrote in this newspaper a few weeks ago describing the task force as “an annexation initiative” that would give Canada away, destroy our culture, surrender our water, oil and electricity and “erase any vestige of Canadian identity”.  The “most perverse” recommendation of all, he declared, would “see the educational system hijacked” by encouraging more North American studies and expanding cross-border scholarship and exchange programs.  How scary.  How pitiful.

Most Canadians have grown tired of these rants and it is not hard to see why.  Mr. Dobbin and his ilk made similar predictions about Canada-United States free trade in the 1980s.  They did it again in the 1990s in objecting to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).  But the actual experience of Canadians over the past two decades has exposed the fallacies and pathetic exaggerations that such groups use to fuel fear and bring in the donations.

The NAFTA has brought real gains to people in all three countries.  Canadian exports have more than doubled.  Mexico’s have grown even faster.  The United States, for its part, sells more to its two North American partners than it does to all of Europe. 

Canada’s commitment to free trade has led to impressive economic growth.  This growth in turn has made possible the federal government’s massive commitments of new money for health care, child care, urban transit and infrastructure and equalization.  Over the past decade, federal revenue from personal income taxes has risen by 70 percent, while corporate tax revenue has tripled.  The federal government last year collected $70 billion more in taxes than it did the year NAFTA was signed.  So much for free trade destroying Canada’s social programs.

Getting closer to the United States and Mexico has given us more control over our destiny, not less.  If Canadian values are growing more distinct from those in the United States, it is because we are more confident than ever in our ability to pursue our own path of social and cultural development.  Open minds and open borders speed our progress and expand our possibilities.  Closed minds and closed borders diminish us.

Canada, the United States and Mexico today share an unprecedented range of challenges.  The global economy is becoming ever more competitive.  The European Union has expanded to 25 countries.  The dramatic growth of China and India is transforming trade and investment patterns around the world.  The world also is a more dangerous place, one that puts at risk the lives and property of Canadians at home and as we travel or work in other countries.

Canada needs to do its part in making North America as a whole safer and more prosperous not because our neighbour to the south demands it, but because it is so clearly in our own national interest.  We need to build on the success of NAFTA, stop squabbling among ourselves and pool our unique strengths in order to strengthen our competitive advantage within the global economy.  We also need to recognize that the health of our economy depends on the smooth flow of goods and people across the border to our largest market.  Our security interests and our economic interests have become inextricably linked.

North America is not Europe.  We are three countries, not 25, and one is much larger than the other two.  We need to follow a different path, one that is shaped by the values we share but that makes the most of our diversity.  We must forge a community of peoples in three sovereign nations that choose to adopt common tools to build a secure and prosperous continent within which goods, people and investment flow freely and every individual can realize the full benefits of our collective efforts.

Presidents Bush and Fox and Prime Minister Martin already have made commitments to strengthen the security and prosperity of the continent.  They will use their summit to unveil new measures to support this goal.  The question, as Mr. Manley put it last week, is whether they choose to go further, to be “architects of the future rather than custodians of the past”.

Many practical and political obstacles lie ahead, and sheer inertia will continue to drive incremental progress.  But the Texas summit needs to generate more than policy snack food; North Americans need a full-course meal.  Only a comprehensive strategy driven by determined leadership will enable all three countries to achieve their full potential and to maximize the security and prosperity of all of their citizens.

David Stewart-Patterson is Executive Vice President of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE).  The CCCE, composed of the chief executives of 150 leading Canadian enterprises, was the private sector leader in developing and promoting the Canada-United States and North American free trade agreements, and launched a North American Security and Prosperity Initiative in 2003.