Private Power, Public Purpose by Thomas d'Aquino

Author:Thomas d'Aquino [d'Aquino, Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Published: 2023-02-21T00:00:00+00:00

The year 2004 heralded important elections in Canada and in the United States. On June 28, the government of Paul Martin was returned to office with a minority, and in November George W. Bush won a second term. Martin’s minority raised concerns in Council circles that the momentum of naspi might be blunted. This turned out not to be the case.

COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS TASK FORCE

One other notable initiative on the North American agenda was launched in 2004. The Council on Foreign Relations, based in New York, sponsored an independent trilateral task force examining the continent’s future. Thanks to Richard Haas, the cerebral president of the Council on Foreign Relations, this was the first time his organization had launched such an undertaking with foreign organizations as partners—the Canadian Council of Chief Executives being one, and the other being the Consejo Mexicano de Asuntos Internacionales. I had actively pursued this idea, believing that an eminent multidisciplinary group would complement the work of continental business leaders in a powerful way.

Joining me as the principal catalysts were Professor Robert Pastor of American University, and Andrés Rozental of the Consejo Mexicano, who had served as Mexico’s ambassador to the United Kingdom. We agreed to serve as task force vice-chairs and as guides. I reached out to former foreign minister John Manley to serve as Canada co-chair; the Americans recruited former Massachusetts governor William Weld to serve as U.S. co-chair; and the Mexicans brought former finance minister Pedro Aspe to the table as the Mexico co-chair. Thirty-one members made up the task force—a virtual who’s who of leading thinkers from across the continent.

The task force tabled its report, titled “Building a North American Community,” in May 2005 and made the following key recommendations: create the institutions necessary to sustain a North American community; immediately create a unified North American Border Action Plan; develop a secure North American border pass with biometric identifiers; enhance law-enforcement cooperation; expand defence cooperation; adopt a common external tariff; develop a North American energy and natural resource security strategy; stimulate economic growth in Mexico; deepen trilateral educational ties; and establish an annual summit of North American leaders.

A reading of the Council on Foreign Relations task force report leads to two conclusions. The first is that the work of the Council’s naspi project, launched in 2003, had a significant impact on our task force deliberations and recommendations. The second is that the task force recommendations broadly matched the boldness of naspi’s ambitions. In my view, the real significance of the work of the task force is that it validated, from the perspective of a group of eminent thinkers from across the continent, what until then had been largely a Council-driven idea.

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