Anyone ever heard of the North American Competitiveness Council? I hadn't either - maybe if I'd read dailykos more closely...But as Maude Barlow - head of Council of Canadians that's leading the fight against destroying Canada - tells us, we best find out. It's one of the Kleptocrats shiny new vehicles for hollowing out our government's ability to protect us from their ravages, so it's impt. to start getting informed - and understand that their political lackeys code about making xAm. "competitive globally" is their code for saying it's our country now buster so screw you. (Too bad activists aren't focusing as much energy on fighting this as they are on foreign policy stuff. There's not even an Am. equivalent of Maude Barlow's organization.)

Since Paul Martin, Vicente Fox and George W. Bush signed the Security and Prosperity Partnership in March 2005, discussions on continental integration have gone underground.

...

Make no mistake, this process of harmonization is not about improving food, environmental and other norms; it is about priming North America for better business by weakening the impacts of such perceived obstacles as environmental standards and labour rights.

This is why the public has been kept in the dark while the business elite has played a leading role in designing the blueprint for this more integrated North America. In fact, they have been the driving force.

In June this year, their power was formalized when our governments created the North American Competitiveness Council (NACC), an advisory committee comprised of representatives from the largest corporations in North America including Wal-Mart, Chevron, General Motors, Lockheed Martin, Suncor and others.

Their goal is to make North America more competitive globally, which means weakening our government's ability to regulate industry, protect the environment or our social safety net.

Lockheed Martin's Ron Covais's statement to Maclean's magazine earlier this month about the role of the NACC was quite revealing:

"The guidance from the ministers was, tell us what we need to do and we'll make it happen."

Sadly, we the public are not informed of what big businesses are telling our ministers to do.

The NACC met in Washington on Aug. 15 to discuss its priorities, but we have very little information about what was said as it was not reported anywhere in the press. Kleptocracy Inc. Taking Over