Opinions

 

 

Fortress North America, or Security
and Prosperity for all?

Canada, US and Mexico working to have the same laws and regulations

Nadya Bell, CUP Ottawa Bureau Chief

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OTTAWA (CUP)—Canada, the United
States, and Mexico will soon have one
way of dealing with security threats,
and intelligence officers that freely
operate across borders, as part of the
Security and Prosperity Partnership of
North America.

Ministers from the three countries
met in Ottawa to discuss how they
will harmonize their activities in law
enforcement, intelligence and disaster
prevention and use the same rules for
trade and the travel of foreign nationals.

The meetings took place Feb 23
between Foreign Affairs Minister Peter
MacKay, United States Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice, and Mexican
Secretary of Foreign Affairs Patricia
Espinosa Cantellano. Trade and security
ministers also participated.

“Because we occupy one physical
space—North America—very often
cooperation is needed between the three
of us to deal with these issues,” Rice

 

said, referring to discussions on a plan
against drug trafficking.

Roughly 50 protesters from a
number of different groups gathered
outside the Lester B. Pearson Building
to oppose the discussions. Protesters
chanted and waved signs calling for an
end to the meetings and more public
participation in the decision-making.

The Security and Prosperity
Partnership of North America (SPP)
was launched in 2005 as a continuation
of the North American Free Trade
Agreement. Because the partnership
is new, much of the work is still in the
planning stages.

MacKay said this was the first
time the three foreign affairs ministers
met together and the meeting was to
understand their common interests.

“We talked about global issues and
how we must continue to share this
cooperation and sense of working
together in areas and issues that have

common cause,” he said.

The discussions are organized
under two broad areas of security and
prosperity.

Addressing the security side, Public
Safety Minister Stockwell Day said
Canada plans to expand the capacity of
the police and other law enforcement
agencies. Canadian RCMP and CSIS
will be working with US and Mexico in
naming potential risks to security, and
officials from the other governments
will get approval to operate in Canada.

They are also carrying out joint
emergency simulation exercises in
the case of a natural or man-made
disaster and cooperating on security.
The simulations include plans for
protecting shared critical infrastructure
such as power stations, oil and gas
pipelines, dams, telecommunications,
transportation and cyber systems.

One more visible aspect of the changes
is new border crossing regulations
allowing pre-approved travelers speedy
approval using retina scans to verify
their identity.

Officials are also working on
continental standards for the duration
of visas and similar requirements for
background checks. They will also use
standard criteria for posting lookouts for
suspected terrorists.

Canada and the U.S. will have a
joint action plan on drugs and will
be sharing information on terrorist
financing through communications
systems—tradios or computers—that
work together.

For law enforcement, North America
as a whole will identify terrorist threats
and have one response. But the Canada

and the US will maintain separate no-fly
lists of people who are not allowed to
enter the country.

Separate lists for identifying terrorist
threats have been important since Maher
Arar was accused of terrorist links and
then cleared in a commission of inquiry
in Canada, while remaining on the U.S.
no-fly list.

Rice said the US has a different
interpretation of the information on
Arar and the county has no intention of
removing his name from its no-fly list.

“Sometimes people have different
assessment of situations,” she said.

“Tt should by no means diminish the
excellent cooperation that we have,
and our very clear standard for keeping
our people on both sides of the border
secure.”

For the prosperity part of the
discussions, the ministers said they
would standardize buying over the
Internet, regulations for cell phones and
other telecommunications equipment.
They are also looking to collaborate
on energy science, regulations and
forecasting for energy needs.

In a press release calling for
disruption of the talks, Block the
Empire Montreal writes: “The ministers
who are gathering in Ottawa to work
out the next phase of the SPP are the
ones who have introduced, implemented
and enforced racist measures such
as the security certificates, ‘special
registration’ and ‘anti-terrorism’ laws.”

They say the efforts of government
ministers are undermining the security
and prosperity of Arab, Muslim and
other communities in North America by
targeting them as terrorist threats.

 

 

Offensive T-shirts pulled

from shelves

CFS challenges company for copyright
infringement, bad taste

Tristan Lapointe, The McGill Daily (McGill University)

MONTREAL (CUP) — The Canadian
Federation of Students has charged a
major clothing company with copyright
infringement by incorporating its design
into what it sees as an offensive and
dangerous T-shirt slogan.

Last month, Bluenotes, one of
Canada’s largest retail chains, began
selling a T-shirt reading “NO MEANS
have aNOther drink” — a play on the
“No Means No” slogan of a CFS

campaign against dating violence and
date rape.

The CFS, which has an open
trademark on the image design,
contacted Bluenotes with both ethical
and legal complaints about the way that
the clothing company was using their
trademarked image. The garment was
pulled from all 116 Bluenotes stores last
week.

Brent Farrington, deputy chairman

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