After almost three years of quiet lobbying and political manoeuvring, Canada’s corporate elite recently went very public with its future blueprint forCanada. The initiative goes by various names: “deep integration,” the BigIdea, and now, in its formal political incarnation, the Security andProsperity Partnership of North America. That’s the name of the agreementsigned by the leaders of Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. on March 23 that wouldbegin the process of economic, social, cultural, and security assimilationinto the U.S.

If it sounds vaguely familiar, it may be because Paul Martinsimply took a Bay Street scheme-called the Security and ProsperityInitiative and made it into Canadian policy without so much as thinkingabout what Canadians might want.

Martin knows what Canadians want, and that is almost certainly why he didn’twant to consult them. Poll after poll reveals that Canadians have differentvalues than Americans, and those differences mean we want less integrationwith the U.S., not more.

Bay Street’s annexation initiative is led by Tom d’Aquino, president of theCanadian Council of Chief Executives, made up of the CEOs of Canada’s 150most powerful corporations. It was called the Business Council on NationalIssues until the CEOs decided, given that they were all global operators,that there were no national issues and changed their name.

D’Aquino and his partners in a corporate task force, former deputy primeminister John Manley and former finance minister Michael Wilson, tell usthat by integrating ever more into the U.S. we will somehow guarantee ourprosperity, creating fortress North America to compete with China, Europe,and other competitors.

The real story is a little different. It goes back to the “leap of faith” infree trade recommended by a federal commission in the 1980s. We took theleap and have been paying ever since. We suffer constant trade harassment.We lost 280,000 of our best jobs, forever. We “restructured” our economy tobe competitive with the U.S. and now have the second-highest percentage oflow-paying jobs in the developed world. On top of that, Industry Canadatells us that 91 per cent of our increased trade with the U.S. had nothing todo with the Free Trade Agreement but was driven by our cheap dollar and theU.S. boom.

The fact is that the FTA failed even from the point of view of Bay Street.Peter Nicholson, one of its principal gurus, a former Scotiabank vicepresident and a personal adviser to Paul Martin, summed up the failure.Supporters of the FTA, Nicholson said, thought it would “cause Canadianfirms to pull up their socks and compete in the North American market.”Instead, many companies adjusted to the FTA “by simply moving across theborder taking the path of least resistance.”

Here, then, is the real story behind “deep integration.” Canada’s businessclass simply cannot compete with its U.S. counterpart. They refuse to payfor the necessary research and development, refuse to train their workers,are constantly begging for more tax cuts, and are notoriously risk-averse.As well, Canadian companies are eager to simply sell out to U.S.corporations. Since 1989, more than 95 per cent of foreign investment inCanada has gone to buying up Canadian companies. Head offices are pouringover the border.

The sheer lack of entrepreneurial vision is evident in Bay Street’sdetermination to tie itself to what more and more economists are declaring adeclining economic power. The growing consensus is that smart countries andcompanies are getting in on the game where the growth is: China, India,Brazil, Russia and South Africa.

But not Canadian companies. Even retiringWorld Bank president James Wolfensohn recently expressed surprise thatCanada sends only six per cent of its exports to these rapidly growingmarkets. Business writer David Crane says: “Canada’s future well-being willdepend on companies with a global strategy, not a North American strategy.”

One of the reasons: The U.S. is now beginning to lose its technology-basedcompetitive advantage. The countries of western Europe, Japan, Korea, andeven China have set ambitious national goals and are building universities,inviting immigration, and have clear objectives regarding industrialdevelopment and new technologies. Ross Armbrecht, president of the U.S.Industrial Research Institute, says “more and more of the most far-reachinginnovations will be going overseas, to India and China, in the near future.”President Bush’s answer to these nation-building efforts? Tax cuts and aperpetual war economy.

This is the economy and country to which Canada’s business leaders want usto tie our star. But even worse, d’Aquino actually believes he can negotiatea good deal with the current U.S. administration and Congress. This isdelusional, given the rapid devolution of the U.S. into an imperialtheocracy. It’s time for Canadians to look elsewhere for leadership; oureconomy, not to mention our country, is far too important to leave to thefailed imagination of Bay Street CEOs.

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Murray Dobbin

Murray Dobbin was rabble.ca's Senior Contributing Editor. He was a journalist, broadcaster, author and social activist for over 40 years. A board member and researcher with the Canadian Centre for Policy...