I will begin the presentation, and Nancy will pick up where I leave off.
The RQIC is a multisectoral coalition that brings together 20 or more social organizations in Quebec, including union, community, grassroots, student and environmental organizations, women's groups, and human rights and international development organizations. Altogether, we represent 1 million people in Quebec.
Today you have appearing before you the representatives of the CSD within the RQIC—myself, in other words—and Nancy, who represents the Fédération des femmes du Québec, or FFQ, within the RQIC.
To begin with, I'd like to thank you for extending your hearings beyond what was originally planned, which was to hear only from officials representing the departments concerned and employer organizations, with the exception of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. It was a great initiative on your part, but it will not be enough.
These hearings are extremely important, but they do not provide an opportunity to reach parliamentarians as a whole—there are about 15 of you here today—and even less so, the people of Canada. And yet, all these people should be kept informed of what a small group of members of the Executive inside the Canadian government is negotiating on their behalf—in other words, the Prime Minister, the Ministers of Industry, Foreign Affairs and Public Safety, and a select group of private sector executives.
We believe that the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, or SPP, is an important issue that should be subject to a broader social debate and a vote in the House of Commons. The government cannot hide behind the fact that this is not a duly signed treaty between the three countries to justify its current behaviour—in other words, working behind closed doors and only disclosing the information that it is absolutely required to disclose through access to information requests, or claiming that these discussions are only aimed at resolving technical issues that are hindering trade between the three countries.
They would clearly have us believe that the object of this initiative is to harmonize the size of cans that are used, so that they can be sold in any of the three countries. But if we're talking about bulk water exports or quintupling the production of oil in the Alberta tar sands, well, those are societal choices that are being challenged. And even if we are only talking about harmonizing the size of cans to be used, is this really that innocent a process, when we know that the country that is used as a benchmark will be well ahead of the other countries—as well as everyone using the right size of can—in terms of producing cheaper cans?
With the tabling of the first progress report on the SPP to leaders by their ministers, three months after the partnership initiative was launched, our apprehensions were confirmed through the fact that working groups engaged in their specific tasks long before the official launch which, in reality, only lifted the veil on the existence of the partnership. Indeed, we discovered that 19 working groups had been established: nine dealing with security and 10 dealing with prosperity. They were tasked with moving forward a hundred or more initiatives with 317 underlying objectives.
As early as June of 2005, this initial report told us that the timelines for some of these objectives had already been completed. When the second report to the leaders was tabled in August of 2006, 65 of those objectives had already been met. Therefore, the SPP is clearly moving ahead at breakneck speed, even though almost no one, other than business executives, is aware of that fact.
The SPP introduces a new mechanism whereby the private sector now controls the decision-making. The chief executives of the largest firms in each of the three countries are now involved in the negotiations and have direct access. They lay out the objectives and the ways of implementing them, whereas the Executive in each of the countries—the three heads of state and the nine ministers responsible for the SPP—are tasked with instrumentalization, through specific economic policies or changes to certain regulations.
The legislative route is to be avoided like the plague because it is seen by business executives as leading nowhere, based on their own statements in that regard, probably because of the debate that changing existing laws or introducing new laws would give rise to.
So, no longer is there any need to engage in backroom lobbying when you have direct access to the powers that be. That access was formalized in June of 2006 with the creation of the North American Competitiveness Council, which is made up of representatives of the 30 largest corporations in North America, for the purpose of advising heads of state on issues relating to North American competitiveness.
Another fact that warrants mention is that the 10 Canadian members of the NACC, who were appointed by Prime Minister Harper in June of 2006, are all members of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, an organization that represents the CEOs of the 150 largest Canadian corporations in Canada. And, it will come as no great surprise that the CCCE is also acting as the secretariat for the Canadian Section of the NACC.
As an illustration of the prominent role of business executives in the North American integration process, I would like to quote the words of the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, Mr. Carlos Gutierrez, at the meeting to launch the NACC on June 15, 2006, in Washington:
The purpose of this meeting was to institutionalize the North American Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) and the NACC, so that the work will continue through changes in administrations.
So, governments can change. The CEO members of the NACC will ensure that any work undertaken through the SPP will continue.
Later, Mr. Ron Covais, CEO of the arms multinational Lockheed Martin, and Chair of the U.S. Section of the NACC, told Maclean's magazine that the ministers had told them that if they let them know what had to be done, they would make it happen. That document, that we are unable to distribute because it is in French only, contains the list of NACC members.
Since when are corporate executives the only ones with something to say about such issues as competitiveness, prosperity and security?
I will now turn it over to Nancy.