North America, Superstate

The belief that a plan to integrate the continent is underway, or should be, just won’t die In reality, there are nosecret schemesor conspiracies or plots, but the idea of North American economic integration is a very real one to many

The proposition, floated recently, that Ottawa and the Bank of Canada were somehow conspiring to drive down the value of the Canadian dollar will probably be with us for a while. It reminds me, though, of the old Brian Mulroney dollar conspiracy, in which he was alleged to have signed a secret addendum to the 1988 Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement whereby Canada agreed to drive the Canadian dollar up. It was all a Mulroney plot, you see, to destroy Canada and force economic integration with the U.S. Many Liberals, New Democrats and some journalists seriously repeated the secret-dollar-deal scenario despite a lack of evidence. That the agreement was secret merely enhanced the conspiracy’s credibility. Didn’t the Canadian dollar rise after the FTA was signed? But how the high Canadian dollar was supposed to promote integration with the U.S. was never all that clear.

Another hot conspiratorial attack on national sovereignty, promoted by Maude Barlow and the Council of Canadians, was the alleged megaproject to build a NAFTA Superhighway network from Mexico to Canada. Barlow had a strange bedmate for this, U.S. presidential candidate and libertarian, Ron Paul. He believed that a suspected plan for a major series of upgraded superhighways — massive expressways and toll roads running north-south from Mexico through his home state of Texas to Churchill, Man. — was part of a nefarious scheme promoted by the North American SuperCorridor Coalition. For Paul, this corporatist effort threatened U.S. independence and sovereignty.

Paul and Barlow, no libertarian, moved on to other conspiracies, but the North American Superhighway nightmare/dream still riles some, especially in Texas where a highway megaproject of toll roads called the Trans-Texas Corridor and its successors is frequently linked in conspiracy circles with the NAFTA Superhighway. So, oddly, is the Keystone XL pipeline, seen by some as an energy extension of the highway scheme.

In reality, there are no secret schemes or conspiracies or plots, but the idea of North American economic integration was a very real one to Robert Pastor, a U.S. political figure from the Jimmy Carter era who, until he died in early January, often wrote about the need for increasing continental unity. Among other things, Pastor — lately a professor and director of the Center for North American Studies at American University — is credited with having proposed “an integrated continental plan for transportation and infrastructure” — a form of NAFTASuperhighway.

In his 2011 book, The North American Idea: A Vision of a Continental Future, Pastor lamented the failure of the leaders of the three North American countries to expand NAFTA and bring about a closer economic relationship. The Pastor plan had its quirks, including protectionist measures such as “Buy North America” rules and a government-backed continental investment fund. But, he insisted in an article last November, “It is not a union.” It’s a community that would create a “seamless market.” He believed the alternative Trans-Pacific Partnership plan promoted by Canada and the U.S. was a “strategic mistake” that diverted attention away from the “North American Idea” that would bring much greater benefit to all three countries.

Pastor quoted Thomas d’Aquino, former head of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives and co-chair with Pastor on the Council on Foreign Relations’ Task Force on the Future of North America. “Economic integration within North America,” d’Aquino said in 2005, “is not only inevitable; it is irreversible.” To which Pastor added: “But that could change.”

And so it has. Instead of a conspiracy to unite, in Pastor’s view we have a failure to co-operate, a failure of vision.