President George Bush met Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper and Mexican president Felipe Calderon at a summit in Montebello near Ottawa over the last two days, in the framework of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) between the three countries.
It is to be expected that they should meet to discuss issues of mutual concern, given the extensive integration that already exists between their neighbouring politics and economics and the common security challenges they face. More surprising is that this framework should be so little explained and controversial in each state.
The partnership was set up in March 2005 in Waco, Texas at a meeting between Mr Bush, the then Mexican president Vicente Fox and the Canadian prime minister Paul Martin. It continues many of the processes initiated under the 1994 North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement between the three countries but does not supplant them. The stated objectives are co-operation and information sharing, improving productivity, reducing the costs of trade, enhancing the joint stewardship of the environment, facilitating agricultural trade while creating a safer and more reliable food supply, and protecting people from disease. A series of working parties was set up to implement them, but the SPP has no timeframes or organisation to realise these goals. It largely consists of existing policies and activities between government departments, brought under a single framework.
Precisely this opacity is what agitates its critics on the left and the right of politics in the US, Canada and Mexico. They say sovereignty is being undermined in the interests of elites who want to see continental economic integration or free movement of workers across borders. Protests held outside the summit said the talks are being carried out behind the backs of ordinary citizens and without any votes or accountability planned in the Canadian parliament or the US Congress. They criticised plans for consultations with corporate leaders, giving them privileged access to political leaders.
Politically, the Canadians used the summit to affirm their sovereignty over Arctic territory in a bid to head off such criticism. The Mexicans lobbied Mr Bush on the fallout from his failed bid to achieve immigration reform. Mr Bush explained why US citizens travelling to Canada or Mexico will have to have passports from next year. The only way to overcome the suspicions reflected in these protests would be for each leader to spell out their co-operative objectives and proposals more explicitly and make them subject to normal accountability and political debate. Their failure to do so feeds these suspicions.