Canada Poised to Affiliate With the European Union
Written by John F. McManus
Wednesday, 08 October 2008 09:19
The people of Canada are discovering that their nation’s leader and other top elected officials in the provinces are working on a massive agreement that will integrate Canada’s economy with the 27 nations of the European Union.
Toronto’s Globe and Mail newspaper, one of Canada’s largest and most influential, bared the plan in a series of articles beginning in mid-September. Talks to iron out details for the linkage are scheduled to be held in Montreal on October 17th where Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper will meet with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the current President of the EU, and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.
The proposed pact would “far exceed the scope of agreements such as NAFTA” stated the Globe and Mail report. It would include not only unrestricted trade and the removal of tariffs but also free movement of skilled workers. In addition, provincial governments would be forced to permit European companies to bid as equals on government business, putting an end to the requirement that official business be awarded to local and even national providers.
Quebec Premier Jean Charest (his office is the equivalent a U.S. state governor) enthusiastically supports the plan, describing it as “a groundbreaking initiative on a scale that has never been attempted.” Already working on the scheme for the past two years, Charest knows that his counterparts in the ten Canadian provinces and three territories must approve any such agreement. Looking ahead, he has boldly told Europeans that they should “do a deal with Canada that can serve as a model for something far more ambitious with the United States.”
Canada has scheduled a national election for October 14. Prime Minister Harper, favored to win reelection, has refused to divulge the text of the proposed agreement until after the votes are counted. Spokespersons for various citizen groups, and editorialists in numerous provincial newspapers, have demanded a release of the documents prior to the election. To date, their demands have been met with silence.
Canadians who favor this proposal are either blind to the virtual cancellation of sovereignty that EU membership has meant for the 27 EU nations, or they favor such a transformational step for their own country. The European Union that started more than 50 years ago as a simple trade agreement has been aptly described today as “a political union” dominating the laws and cultural traditions of all member nations. Should Canada affiliate with the EU as this plan proposes, a similar loss of independence will surely follow. The EU and similar “free trade” pacts in other parts of the world are being employed to build world government region by region rather than the more difficult route involving country by country submergence.
In the U.S., public resistance to the proposed North American Union designed to forge economic links among the United States, Canada and Mexico has successfully blocked the plan to date. Aroused Americans have become aware that the NAU is intended to be merely the first step in duplicating the plan that has crushed independence for Europe’s nations. But Canadian officials, led by Quebec’s Charest and Prime Minister Harper, seem anxious to compromise their own nation first, and then push the United States into the long-desired world government sought by generations of behind-the-scenes schemers.