If you liked the North American Free Trade Agreement and the recently-signed Central America Free Trade Agreement, then you're REALLY gonna love NAFTA-Plus or what "some civil society groups are calling the phenomenon by another name, the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPPNA), an official sobriquet for the summits held by the three chief executives to agree on the future of “North America.” "

It's not really about trade, though. It's about securing oil, fresh water and natural gas for the US, letting the private sector rack up $$$$$$$ and wiping out the national borders between the US, Canada and Mexico. And it's being done through tri-national regulations, not open public debate!

I found this article on a great web site called Energy Bulletin:

Trinational Elites Map North American Future in "NAFTA Plus"

Published on 24 Aug 2005 by International Relations Center
by Miguel Pickard

Here's a few items of note from the original (and much larger) article in IRC Americas Program...

Contrary to NAFTA, whose tenets were laid out in a single negotiated treaty subjected to at least cursory review by the legislatures of the participating countries, NAFTA Plus is more the elites’ shared vision of what a merged future will look like. Their ideas are being implemented through the signing of “regulations,” not subject to citizens’ review. This vision may initially have been labeled NAFTA Plus, but the name gives a mistaken impression of what is at hand, since there will be no single treaty text, no unique label to facilitate keeping tabs.
~
The initial steps for the creation of a new North American space have already been taken. Mexico, in particular, will have to make the most far-reaching adjustments, and face difficult questions regarding national identity and the nation’s future. In Canada, although the issue is generally unknown, there is now lively discussion within academic settings and NGOs.2 In the United States, the issue is still off the screen.

Matters of identity and sovereignty for the United States will likely be mute, given that it has the most to gain and the least to lose. Advantages for the United States will include the right to decide on crucial matters such as “pushing out” its borders in response to regional security concerns, and access to strategic natural resources, particularly oil, gas, and fresh water. For the trade, manufacturing, and financial elites of Mexico and Canada, NAFTA Plus will likely mean a “porous” border for its products and services, and virtually unrestricted access to the United States, still the largest consumer market in the world.

The trinational elites of the private sector will accrue greater benefits in this new space, but the American government and private sector will reap the greatest gains. The three countries will not be equal partners. As in the early 90s when NAFTA was negotiated, no pretense will be made now of taking into account the huge asymmetries between the United States and its smaller partners, likely leading to an erosion of sovereignty for Mexico and Canada.

~BIG SNIP~

In April 2002, the United States unilaterally created the North American Command and drew a defense perimeter around itself, Mexico, Canada, the Caribbean, and adjacent seas.25 This “land command” is one of five that the United States has created throughout the world. Even the universe is considered, since there are also five “special commands,” one for outer space.

The concern for territorial security has already led to the outward expansion of American borders. Today the U.S. borders are increasingly the extremes of its two neighboring countries. The American security perimeter extends from Canada’s far north, the Arctic Ocean, to Mexico’s extreme south, bordering with Guatemala and Belize. Crossing this expanded perimeter will increasingly mean complying with the same security standards that the United States has at its traditional borders.

The perimeter responds to the objective of maintaining “at a safe distance” American enemies, making it more difficult to gain access to U.S. territory. In concrete terms, the idea is to make entry into Canada and Mexico equally rigorous as entrance into the United States. By integrating Mexico and Canada into its security perimeter, the neighboring countries become an extra margin of safety sought by the Pentagon to thwart possible terrorists.
~
Under NAFTA Plus and the dismantling of borders, it would be difficult or impossible for Canada to prevent the transfer of water or other natural resources through trade transactions with the United States.
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The rapid creation of a single North America is now being charted by government strategists basically in the United States. An important contribution to the process came in a series of recommendations released in May 2005 by the Independent Task Force on the Future of North America (ITF)...
Three months after the ITF’s recommendations were made public, on June 27, 2005 the three countries signed “a battery of close to 300 regulations [...that] contain the standardization of policies for monitoring travelers and goods arriving from third countries, including systems for visa issuance, categorization of ´high-risk travelers’ and ‘trustworthy travelers,’ and the future implementation of a smart card for those wanting to transit swiftly through the common borders of the region.”
~

Full article is a MUST READ!
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/386

As the author concludes:
" The task before civil society in all three countries is enormous. Citizen organizations must begin a concerted effort to understand the regulations signed to date and their implications, in order to fight for their suspension. Still, motives for optimism exist. Actions implemented under the guise of NAFTA Plus by means of regulations have proceeded unchallenged thus far, but their validity lacks treaty status. As such, modifying or canceling these undemocratic regulations would seem to be within reach of an informed, organized, and mobilized civil society and, hopefully, a united trinational civil society."

I'm not sure what organizations need to oppose this plan. But I do know, if gwb "is now vigorously pushing it forward" it can't be good, not for us or for Canada and Mexico.