Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America - Criticism

Criticism

In 2006, CNN anchor Lou Dobbs argued that the SPP was part of a plan to merge the United States, Canada, and Mexico into a North American Union similar to the European Union,. Dobbs claimed at the time that US President Bush, who left office on January 20, 2009, was to have bypassed Congress and ultimately create a Union based on a Texas highway corridor. One variation of this theory was that President Bush would declare a state of emergency to avoid leaving office, which, in fact, never came about; on January 20, 2009, his successor, Barack Obama, who had openly voiced misgivings about NAFTA, the predecessor to SPP, let alone SPP itself, took office as US President, but his anti-NAFTA views soon disappeared from his public persona.

The Council of Canadians claimed that the SPP extended the controversial "no fly list" of the USA, made Canadian water a communal resource, and forced Canada and Mexico to adopt the USA's security policies - one of which would allow foreign military forces to neglect sovereignty in the case of a "civil emergency". In addition, it also touched on the issue of Albertan tar sands expansion to five times its current size.

On May 10, 2007, Conservative MP Leon Benoit, chair of the Canadian House of Commons Standing Committee on International Trade, prevented University of Alberta professor Gordon Laxer from testifying that SPP would leave Canadians "to freeze in the dark" because "Canada itself – unlike most industrialized nations – has no national plan or reserves to protect its own supplies" by saying Laxer's testimony was not relevant, defying a majority vote to overrule his motion, shutting down the Committee meeting, and leaving with the other three out of four Conservative members; the meeting later continued presided by the Liberal vice-chair. After these disruptions, the National Post reported on a Conservative party manual to, among other things, usurp Parliamentary committees and cause chaos in unfavourable committees. The New Democratic Party also criticized SPP for being undemocratic, not open to Parliament, and opaque. New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton described the process as not simply unconstitutional, but "non-constitutional", held completely outside the usual mechanisms of oversight.

Some thirty US-based organizations also sent an open letter to Congress on April 21, 2008 criticizing the secrecy and lack of any sort of democratic oversight:

"What differentiates the SPP from other security and trade agreements is that it is not subject to Congressional oversight or approval. The SPP establishes a corporate/government bureaucracy for implementation that excludes civil society participation. ... Facing a worrisome pact pushed forward in secrecy, it is time for Congress to halt this undemocratic approach and establish a process based on openness, accountability, and the participation of civil society.