Green Party of Canada Takes on the SPP Alerting US Greens and Planning Cross Border Summit !!

By Dr. Janet Eaton, International Trade Critic, Green Party Shadow Cabinet The Green Party of Canada has come out strongly against the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) and is organizing a ‘counter-summit’ on August 20th in response to the third annual meeting of the SPP leaders on August 19th and 20th in Montebello, Quebec (near Ottawa). Members of the Green Party US will be on hand to offer their support. The SPP is not a treaty or an agreement like NAFTA but rather a framework for a partnership which builds on NAFTA within a broader security policy framework agreed upon by the leaders of Canada, US and Mexico in Waco, Texas in March of 2005. The SPP, which is being implemented incrementally and in relative secrecy under the radar screen of public and Parliamentary scrutiny, will make it even easier for the US to access Canada's natural resources and water, weaken Canadian food safety, health and environmental regulations to fall into line with those of the US and force Canada to adopt US homeland security policies and many other measures that erode Canadian sovereignty, and human rights. Stopping the SPP is an imperative and overarching issue for The Green Party of Canada. We are at the eleventh hour in terms of the SPP which is moving rapidly towards a deeper form of continental integration by 2010. Just this fall we learned of a series of Roundtables organized by the US Center for Strategic International Studies under the title North American Future 2025 Project whose outcome documents are rumoured to be policy instruments for leaders to examine at the Montebello Summit. Within this kind of North American Community we would find ourselves harnessed to a nation which has clawed back essential laws which defy the first amendment of their Constitution and imposed police state like tactics and policies by Executive orders, and which is waging an unending war on terror begun on the basis of widely recognized false accusations. We would no longer have a voice in international trade arena, our foreign policy and military would be managed even more explicitly from Washington and any semblance of sovereignty and adherence to former so–called Canadians public policy values would be lost. Canada will be subservient to a dominant world power which, under its present administration, has clawed back and destroyed years of progressive environmental legislation what Robert F. Kennedy Junior has called ‘Crimes Against Nature’. Most Canadians don’t even know the SPP exists and when they learn about it they are shocked. The Green Party considers it urgent to increase public awareness of the SPP. The planned ‘counter-summit’ is just one step. Locations and other details of the summit are still being negotiated and these will be posted on the GPC website as soon as they are finalized. Your presence is encouraged - the greater the numbers, the more press we receive. The SPP will be a prominent part of our platform for the next election. Elizabeth May made this clear at the Civil Society Challenging the SPP: Integrate This - Teach In on March 31st. The Green Party would scrap the SPP and force the re-negotiation of NAFTA, which the Canadian government can do by invoking the six month clause to rescind NAFTA. Recent reports are showing that NAFTA did not live up to its promises and even The Economist magazine recently wrote that NAFTA was oversold. Yet, the SPP builds on NAFTA as if it were an unmitigated success. The Green Party believes that trade deals must be open and democratic, reflecting a commitment to "fair trade" above "free trade." Fair trade means that economic, social and ecological justice must not succumb to investor rights, embodied in one of the most problematic Chapters of NAFTA. The government’s responsibility to protect its citizens and the environment must trump short-term economic interests. Please come to Ottawa on August 20th for the Green Party’s SPP Summit. I have recently returned from the annual meeting of the Green Party of the US where, as your International trade critic, I had several opportunities to speak on the SPP. You can hear some of this by tuning in to a short YouTube video clip from a presentation I made during an international media panel and to the Power Point presentation I made on the SPP and its implications for energy and the environment. [Google Dr Janet Eaton on SPP or link from GPC SPP page on our website http://www.greenparty.ca/en/policy/documents/deeper_look_spp/dr_janet_eaton ] Only a handful of the US Greens had heard of the SPP but there was a real buzz about it. Many US Greens are planning to come to our Summit. Our Summit will be part of a broader ‘civil society’ event for which many groups are organizing family friendly rallies, forums, and teach-ins. The Council of Canadians, Common Frontiers, an alliance of trade groups with international partners, the Canadian Peace Alliance, NOWar Paix of Ottawa, the Outaouais-Ottawa Stop the SPP Committee and many other groups are involved. The NDP is also organizing their teach in. You can check out the activities by googling Integrate This Call to Action Against the SPP or at the following URL http://www.canadians.org/integratethis/summit/index.html. The August 20th Summit is an opportunity to bring Green Party members together face to face, to build synergy, to attract new members, and to go back to our ridings with a sound knowledge of a key overarching issue which affects many of our policies, our future and that of our children and grandchildren. This could be a seminal moment in our party’s history! Janet M Eaton, PhD International Trade Critic Green Party of Canada Wolfville, Nova Scotia To learn more about the SPP, please refer to several growing sections on our website. 1. The Security and Prosperity Partnership - Why We Need to Take a Closer Look at Continental Integration http://www.greenparty.ca/en/policy/documents/deeper_look_spp 2. Security and Prosperity Partnership FAQ – 18 questions and answers on the SPP http://www.greenparty.ca/en/policy/spp_FAQ 3. Threats to Our Water: NAFTA, SPP, Super- Corridors, Atlantica by Dr. Janet Eaton, PhD. Power Point with images and photos 4. Press Releases