The Security and Prosperity Partnership’s Impact on New England

Topic: Globalization and New England: What is the Impact of the Security and Prosperity Partnership?
Speaker: Janet Eaton of the Sierra Club, Canada - SPP researcher
Date: Monday, March 24 at 6:30 pm
Location: Boston Public Library at Copley Square in Boston
Sponsored by: North Bridge and Boston/Cambridge chapters of the Alliance for Democracy

Carpools to Alewife: call (978) 369-1181

A little background:

As an American citizen you probably have not heard about this “public-private partnership”. There is little information in the US media about this agreement being worked on by the executive branches of the governments of the US, Mexico and Canada. Input into the agreement is made by the North American Competitiveness Council. Comprised of 30 senior private sector representatives, 10 from each country (though there are 13 U.S. members), the council is mandated to provide governments with recommendations on issues including border regulation and competitiveness in the automotive, transportation, manufacturing and services sectors. The US members include the CEOs of Lockheed-Martin, General Electric, New York Life, Wal-Mart, General Motors, Ford, Merck, Chevron and others. Note that there is no input from Congress or the general public though it will affect us all.

SPP is totally undemocratic. It ducks congressional debate and oversight, using tax money and private funds for its planning groups and supercorridor construction. The planned supercorridors are 12-lane superhighways flanked by rail and pipelines. They are intended to extend from ports in Mexico where goods from abroad will be downloaded, through the center of the US, splitting into sections going through New England up into Nova Scotia (the Atlantica branch) and through the Northwest into western Canada (the Pacifica branch). Construction has already begun in Texas on land taken by eminent domain. Accelerated pollution will add to global warming and to permanent ecosystem and health damage. SPP makes no plans for conservation, renewable energy, or wages and worker protection.

Canadians are upset over the impending loss of their water and oil resources and control over prices. Mexican oil profits will be funneled into Wall Street, and Mexican laborers will be stuck in low-wage sweatshop and plantation/oilfield conditions. Economically squeezed people in Canada and Mexico will become restricted “guest workers” in the US, further driving down wages of US workers.

Under Homeland Security and US military control, Canadian and Mexican police and military will be set up to expand their operations onto

soil so as to protect the new infrastructure of SPP and suppress opposition. Hydrocarbon and water resources will be drawn down toward exhaustion. and corporate officers and shareholders and Mexican landholders will profit in the short term, but ordinary people—in danger of being tarred with the “terrorist sympathizer” brush and detained by order of Homeland Security—will suffer reduced living standards and undermined democracy.