Author: mopress

Prime Minister announces Canadian membership of North American Competitiveness Council

June 13, 2006
Ottawa, Ontario

Prime Minister Stephen Harper today announced the Canadian membership of the North American Competitiveness Council, which was launched at the meeting of North American leaders in Cancun, Mexico, in March 2006. The Canadian members of the Competitiveness Council are Dominic D’Alessandro (Manulife Financial); Paul Desmarais, Jr. (Power Corporation of Canada); David Ganong (Ganong Bros. Limited); Richard George (Suncor Energy Inc.); Hunter Harrison (CN); Linda Hasenfratz (Linamar Corporation); Michael Sabia (Bell Canada Enterprises); Jim Shepherd (Canfor Corporation); Annette Verschuren (The Home Depot); and Rick Waugh (Scotiabank).

“I am delighted that these accomplished individuals have agreed to apply their considerable private sector expertise to help us identify and pursue initiatives that will create a more competitive North America,” said the Prime Minister.

The Council comprises 30 senior private sector representatives, 10 from each country, and has a mandate to provide governments with recommendations on broad issues such as border facilitation and regulation, as well as the competitiveness of key sectors including automotive, transportation, manufacturing and services. The Council will meet annually with security and prosperity ministers and will engage with senior government officials on an ongoing basis. The Competitiveness Council is an initiative of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America.

Biographical notes are attached.

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NORTH AMERICAN COMPETITIVENESS COUNCIL – BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

Dominic D’Alessandro

Dominic D’Alessandro was born in Italy in 1947. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Loyola College and qualified as a chartered accountant in 1971. He has been President and Chief Executive Officer of Manulife Financial since 1994.

Mr. D’Alessandro has had an extensive and varied background in the financial services industry. From 1968 to 1975 he was employed by Coopers & Lybrand, where he spent time in the firm’s Paris office. In 1975, he joined Genstar Ltd. and worked in Saudi Arabia as Director of Finance and subsequently Manager, and was later based in San Francisco as Vice-President of the Materials and Construction Group. He joined the Royal Bank of Canada in 1981 where he held a number of positions, including Executive Vice-President. In 1988 he was appointed President and Chief Executive Officer of the Laurentian Bank of Canada.

Mr. D’Alessandro has been a member of several boards of directors and was the 2001-02 Campaign Chair for the Salvation Army and for the Greater Toronto United Way in 1998. He has received numerous honours, including Canada’s Outstanding CEO of 2002, Officer of the Order of Canada in 2003, and Canada’s Most Respected CEO in 2004.

Paul Desmarais, Jr.

Paul Desmarais, Jr. was born in Sudbury, Ontario, in 1954. He obtained a Bachelor of Commerce degree from McGill University and graduated from the European Institute of Business Administration in Fontainebleau, France, with a master’s degree in business administration. Since 1996, he has been Chairman and Co-Chief Executive Officer of Power Corporation of Canada (PCC) and has been Chairman of the Executive Committee of Power Financial Corporation (PFC) since 2005.

Prior to joining PCC in 1981, Mr. Desmarais was with S.G. Warburg & Co. in London, England, and with Standard Brands Incorporated in New York. He was President and Chief Operating Officer of PFC from 1986 to 1989, and Chairman from 1990 to 2005.

He is also a director and member of the executive committee of many Power group companies in North America including Great-West Lifeco and IGM Financial. In addition, he holds executive board positions with several European companies, including Pargesa Holding S.A. (Switzerland), Imerys (France), Groupe Bruxelles Lambert (Belgium), Total S.A. and Suez (France).

Mr. Desmarais is Chairman of the Board of Governors of The International Economic Forum of the Americas, Founder and Chairman of the International Advisory Committee of l’École des Hautes Études Commerciales and Founder and Member of the International Advisory Board of the McGill University Faculty of Management in Canada. He is a member of the International Council and a director of the European Institute of Business Administration. He is also a member of the International Advisory Board of the La Poste Group in France.

In 2005, Mr. Desmarais was named an Officer of the Order of Canada and received the Executive of the Year Award from the Academy of International Business.

David A. Ganong

David Ganong was born in St. Stephen, New Brunswick, in 1943. He received a B.A. from the University of New Brunswick in 1965 and an M.B.A. from the University of Western Ontario in 1970. He is President of Ganong Brothers Limited.

Mr. Ganong is a director of the Canadian Council of Chief Executive Officers, Sun Life Financial and the Conference Board of Canada. He is also Chairman of the Board of Governors of the University of New Brunswick and the New Brunswick Business Council. Some of his previous positions include Chairman of the Confectionery Manufacturers’ Association of Canada, Chairman of the Board of Clarica Life Insurance Co. and Chairman of the Young Presidents’ Organization for Canada. He has also been a director of the Dalhousie Medical Research Foundation and Air Canada.

Mr. Ganong was named a Member of the Order of Canada in 2005 and was inducted into the Canadian Professional Sales Association Hall of Fame in 1999.

Richard Lee George

Rick George was born in Brush, Colorado, in 1950. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering from Colorado State University, a law degree from the University of Houston Law School and is a graduate of the Harvard Business School Program for Management Development. He was appointed President and Chief Executive Officer of Suncor Energy in 1991.

Mr. George has held various positions with Sun Company both in the U.S. and the U.K. in the areas of project planning, production evaluation, exploration and production, and in the international oil business as managing director of Sun Oil Britain Limited.

Mr. George was named Chairman of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives in 2003 and is Chair of the 2008 Governor General’s Canadian Leadership Conference. He is also a member of the board of directors of the U.S. offshore and onshore drilling company, Global Santa Fe Corporation.

He was named Outstanding CEO of the Year in 1999 and received the Canadian Business Leader Award in 2000.

Hunter Harrison

Hunter Harrison was born in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1944. He became President and Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian National Railway Company (CN) in 2003.

Mr. Harrison’s railroad career began in 1964 when he joined the Frisco Railroad (St. Louis-San Francisco Railroad) as a carman-oiler while still attending school. He held positions of increasing responsibility at the Frisco and Burlington Northern Railroad (BN) after BN acquired the Frisco in 1980. He joined the Illinois Central Railroad in 1989 as Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer and rose through the ranks to become President and Chief Executive Officer in 1993. CN acquired IC in 1999. Prior to his current position, Mr. Harrison was CN’s Executive Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer from 1998 to 2003 and he became a director in 1999.

Mr. Harrison is a member of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives and was named North America’s Railroader of the Year in 2002.

Linda Hasenfratz

Linda Hasenfratz was born in Guelph, Ontario, in 1966. She holds an Honours Bache
lor of S
cience from the University of Western Ontario and completed an Executive M.B.A. from the Ivey School of Business at the same university in 1997. She is Chief Executive Officer of Linamar Corporation.

Ms. Hasenfratz joined Linamar Corporation in 1990 and embarked on an extensive training program to gain familiarity with all aspects of the business, working as a machine operator, engineering technician and production control coordinator. She was Materials Manager of the Traxie subsidiary and in 1995 became Operations Manager for the start up of Comtech Manufacturing Ltd. She was named General Manager of Comtech and Vehcom Manufacturing in 1997. Ms. Hasenfratz was named Chief Operating Officer of Linamar in 1997 and President in 1999, before assuming her current position in 2002.

Ms. Hasenfratz is a member of the board of directors of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, the Catalyst Canadian Board of Advisors, the Royal Ontario Museum, and the Original Equipment Manufacturers Association.

Michael J. Sabia

Michael Sabia was born in St. Catharines, Ontario, in 1953. He received a B.A. in economics and politics from the University of Toronto and an M.A., M.Phil. from Yale University. He is President and Chief Executive Officer of Bell Canada Enterprises (BCE).

Mr. Sabia held a number of senior positions in the Canadian Public Service, including Director General of Tax Policy in the Department of Finance, and Deputy Secretary to the Cabinet in the Privy Council Office. He joined the Canadian National Railway Company as Vice-President, Corporate Development, in 1993 and was appointed Executive Vice-President and Chief Financial Officer in 1995. He joined the BCE group in 1999 and was appointed President and Chief Operating Officer of BCE and Bell Canada in 2002.

Mr. Sabia received an honorary doctorate from the University of Ottawa in 2006.

James A. Shepherd

Jim Shepherd was born in Quebec City, Quebec, in 1952. He graduated from Queen’s University in 1974 with a degree in mechanical engineering and is President and Chief Executive Officer of Canfor Corporation.

Mr. Shepherd has been employed in the forest products business for more than 25 years in both Ontario and B.C., first with British Columbia Forest Products Ltd. and then with Crestbrook Forest Industries Ltd. He joined Slocan Forest Products Ltd. as President and Chief Operating Officer in 1999 and became Chief Executive Officer in 2000. In 2004, he became President and Chief Executive Officer of Canfor.

Mr. Shepherd is a member of the Board of Governors of the University of Northern British Columbia, the Board of Directors of the Council of Forest Industries, the B.C. Progress Board, the Vancouver Board of Trade, and the Asia Pacific Trade Council, and is Chairman of the Forest Products Association of Canada. He was Chair of the B.C. Forest Safety Council and has participated in the United Way since 1995

Annette Verschuren

Annette Verschuren was born in North Sydney, Nova Scotia, in 1956. She holds a Bachelor of Business Administration from St. Francis Xavier University. In 1996 she joined The Home Depot Canada and is Division President of the company’s Canadian operations.

Ms. Verschuren began her career as a development officer with the Cape Breton Development Corporation in Sydney, Nova Scotia. She went on to work with Canada Development Investment Corporation as Executive Vice- President and then joined Imasco Ltd. as Vice-President of Corporate Development. Prior to joining The Home Depot, Ms. Verschuren was President and co-owner of Michael’s of Canada from 1993 to 1996.

She has been honoured with a doctorate from both Mount Saint Vincent University and St. Francis Xavier University, and was named the 2005 Distinguished Canadian Retailer of the Year by the Retail Council of Canada. Ms. Verschuren was installed as Chancellor of Cape Breton University and she is currently on the board of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, Chair of Habitat for Humanity’s National President’s Council and a member of the Canadian Corporate Council on Volunteering.

Richard E. Waugh

Rick Waugh was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 1947. He holds a Bachelor of Commerce (Honours) from the University of Manitoba, and a Master of Business Administration from York University. Since 2003, he has been President and Chief Executive Officer of Scotiabank.

Mr. Waugh began his career with Scotiabank and served in a number of positions in the retail and commercial, investment, corporate and international banking areas. He was appointed Senior Vice-President, North American Corporate Banking in 1983. In 1985, he moved to New York where, for the next eight years, he played a pivotal role in the development and expansion of the bank’s U.S. activities.

In 1993, Mr. Waugh returned to Toronto as Senior Executive Vice-President, Corporate Banking. He was appointed Vice-Chairman, Corporate Banking in 1995, and Vice-Chairman, International Banking and Wealth Management in 1998.

Mr. Waugh is a Fellow of the Institute of Canadian Bankers, serves on the Board of Directors of St. Michael’s Hospital and is Campaign Chair of the United Way of Greater Toronto’s 2006 Campaign.
Source

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NAFTA STEEL PRODUCERS WELCOME MINISTERS’ REVIEW OF SPP PROGRESS AND LAUNCH OF NORTH AMERICAN COMPETITIVENESS COUNCIL (NACC); COMMIT TO STEEL’S ACTIVE PARTICIPATION IN NACC

Washington DC, June 16, 2006 — NAFTA steel producers welcomed events yesterday in Washington, which included a review of progress under the North American Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) and a first meeting of SPP Prosperity Ministers with the private sector leadership of the newly established North American Competitiveness Council (NACC).

NAFTA steel producers committed to participate actively, at the highest levels, in the NACC. From the start, steel has been especially active in the SPP and a critical component of its progress. Last June in Ottawa, Ministers from all three NAFTA countries announced they have formed a “strategic partnership” with this “strategic industry.” As a successful example of sectoral cooperation between NAFTA governments and industry, the North American Steel Trade Committee (NASTC) has, in recent months, developed an agreed steel strategy to promote growth, competitiveness and prosperity in the NAFTA region.

It rests on three essential pillars:

1. External Trade — eliminating distortions through policy coordination and other actions to ensure that NAFTA steel markets reflect fair trade;
2. Internal Trade — facilitating intra-NAFTA steel trade through enhanced monitoring and other proactive measures to reduce the costs of such trade; and

3. Industry Competitiveness/Productivity — enhancing the competitiveness of the steel industry in North America through innovation and market development.

“We are pleased that the Mexican steel industry will be part of the NACC,” said Octavio Rangel Frausto, General Director of the Mexican Steel Producers Association (CANACERO). “North American steel producers look forward to exploring with NAFTA governments ways to facilitate intra-NAFTA trade, improve the functioning of the North American steel market and enhance border infrastructure and cross-border Customs cooperation.”

“U.S. steel producers welcome the appointment of Louis Schorsch (CEO, Mittal Steel USA) to serve on the U.S. Executive Committee of the NACC,” said Andrew G. Sharkey, III, President and CEO of the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI). “While the NASTC will continue to implement the agreed steel strategy, we expect the NACC to provide a means to address important ‘cross linkage’ issues, including the need to (p.2) ensure available and cost-effective energy supply in the NAFTA region and promote the competitiveness of North American manufacturing through innovation and market development.”

“Transportation and the building of a world class, 21st century infrastructure in the NAFTA region are additional important cross linkage issues where North America’s steel producers expect to play a constructive role in the new NACC,” said Thomas A. Danjczek, President of the Steel Manufacturers Association (SMA). “Steel is part of the solution to the competitiveness challenges facing North America.”

“Steel and manufacturing in general are critical to national defense and homeland security in the NAFTA region,” said David A. Hartquist, Counsel to the Specialty Steel Industry of North America (SSINA).

“The steel strategy and the NACC complement each other in the sense that both will focus on efforts to strengthen North America’s manufacturing base.” “NAFTA governments have a responsibility to ensure that globally competitive, efficient producers in North America can achieve market-based outcomes,” said Barry Lacombe, President of the Canadian Steel Producers Association (CSPA).

“In addition to focusing on ways to improve the efficiency of the private sector in the NAFTA region, it should be a top priority of the NACC to understand and effectively address the economic strategies of China and India.”

* Over the past three years, through the NASTC, North American steel producer associations (CSPA, AISI, SMA, SSINA and CANACERO) have been working closely with the governments of Canada, the United States and Mexico to explore and define the key elements of a pro-manufacturing agenda for North America. The NACC will help intensify this work.

The North American steel industry supports the overall competitiveness, prosperity and security of North America. Steel producers in North America employ more than 1.5 million people through direct and related jobs, and contribute over U.S. $80 billion in annual sales revenue. The member companies of participating NASTC associations account for more than 95 percent of the carbon and specialty steel products made annually in North America.

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see pdf original

by Greg Moses

OpEdNews / CounterPunch / DissidentVoice / IndyBay

Just as PNAC or the Project for the New American Century helped us to think about underlying motives for the public shams of the war on terrorism, so might CNAC or the Compact for North American Competitiveness help us to think about drama at the border between Mexico and the USA. Already CNAC’s preferences for “border security” and “temporary workers” have attracted friends with clout, but did you know that Mexican oil is also on the agenda?
Shortly after last year’s Waco Summit brought together three North American heads of state, Bush, Fox, and Martin, a CNAC proposal was released by the US Council of the Mexico-US Business Committee (MEXUS), an organization which predates the Council of the Americas (COA) to which it now belongs.

The April 2005 report is signed by COA heavyweights Robert Mosbacher and James Jones, backed by a leadership team composed of ChevronTexaco, Eastman Kodak, First Data, Ford Motor, Kissinger McLarty, Manatt Jones Global Strategies, Merck, MetLife, Miller and Chevalier, Nextel, and Proctor and Gamble.

In a preface to the report, MEXUS takes a lot of credit for creating NAFTA or the North American Free Trade Agreement; brags about publishing “NAFTA Works”; and promises to maintain leadership for “increasing competitiveness” in the unified North American bloc.

The fact that seems to irritate this report more than any other is that despite NAFTA the maquiladora sector of the Mexican economy had managed to lose 250,000 jobs to China in the first five years of the new American century. This fact also locates the area that CNAC authors are most interested to address: how to fix the problems of Mexico so that the NAFTA alliance can steal back those maquiladora jobs. One key task is “free and secure” trade through borders which commodities can speed quickly, but which must do a better job screening people.

Concurrent with release of this report last April, the Minutemen were quietly fading into the margins of the media when their profile was rescued by terminator Governor Schwarzenegger of California. At that time, remember, Schwarzenegger miscued himself by talking about “closing the border”, a line he later delivered closer to script.

“Yesterday was a total screw-up in the words I used,” the governor said at a press conference. “Because instead of closing, I meant securing.” With those words, pieces of the border puzzle had actually locked into place last April, soon followed last May by a caucus report from Congress calling for 36,000 national guard at the border. At the time, the idea seemed far-fetched, like the idea of full-scale invasions had sounded a few years before that.

As we now know, the President has fulfilled the 2005 prophesies by sending thousands of troops to replace the function modeled by the Minutemen, just as Schwarzenegger and the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus had suggested in the first place.

Besides “border security” the CNAC report is clear in its preference for a second darling policy favored by Bush and Companies: an “enforceable temporary worker program that will match willing workers with willing employers, bringing order and increased security to current haphazard patterns of immigration.” We haven’t heard the end of this idea this year. Having a global temp service is really too tempting for Mexico’s continental partners to ignore.

Given the momentum that security and temp work are having in the real world today, it is worth noting a third area of prime concern for CNAC, and that is reform of Mexico’s oil and gas industry. In the near term, says the CNAC report, the Mexican government has to improve opportunities for private investment and in the long term Mexico has to find “cost-effective means to raise production.” Unless this is done, says the CNAC report, “security and competitiveness within North America will be impacted.”

This past weekend in its coverage of the Mexican presidential race, scheduled for July 2, the Associated Press clearly outlined the positions of each major candidate on reforming the Mexican oil and gas sector. While reading those news reports online I got the queasy feeling that CNAC was beginning to look like PNAC all over again. Get the CNAC report in pdf

By Greg Moses

CounterPunch / OpEdNews

These three sentences prove why Generals are not paid to determine political policy:

“The border should not be militarized,” said National Guard Chief Steven Blum at Thursday’s press conference in Austin. “We made a conscious choice not to use the National Guard as a police force. We should intervene to save lives, not to take them.”

If the plain speaking General were paid to make policy, we would stop at the first sentence and scrap the deployment of National Guard to the border. But there’s more.

In the logical transition that Blum makes from police to military between sentences two and three, his propositions make it seem like the real function of a police force is to take lives not save them. Again, this kind of plain speaking would have policy consequences quite different from the ones being made by politicos. Especially if we add to the consequences of police work the entire network of jails and prisons, we could ask, are the police saving lives or taking them?

The third sentence on its own terms suggests sending the Guard to rescue people from the border desert, preventing the summer death toll from climbing with the heat. But as if to interrupt the startling revolution inaugurated by his logic, the General gives us three more sentences to hear.

“This is not a military mission,” Blum said. “This is not militarizing. This is not an invasion.”

Here, with his thrice repeated invocation of the great Hegelian “this”, the General switches his propositions from universals to existentials, proving Hegel’s thesis that “this” can be anything, anywhere, anytime.

In “this” the General speaks just the facts: he is not commanding a military mission, his troops are not militarizing anything, and (presumably since the Guard will keep to this side of the Rio Bravo, etc.) this is not an invasion.

Is it the general’s fault that he is speaking exactly from where he has no real business being? And isn’t it only a matter of time before this happens to any other general in the USA?

Added Paul McHale, the Pentagon’s assistant defense secretary for Homeland Defense: “We would send the wrong message to our friends and neighbors to the south to have a large, visible buildup along the border.”

Back to universals. A border buildup would send the wrong signal. You have to supply what follows. Are we not sending troops to the border? Yes we are. Are they not visible or large? In this question lies the crossroads to our logical challenge.

If the military force is visible and large, it will send the wrong signal to “our friends to the south.” If we are not sending the wrong signal, “our friends” should try to see it as invisible and small (and there is a case to be made for this along a line that stretches a couple thousand miles.)

But the military deployment of 6,000 troops, half of whom will stand guard along the border, must be visible and large enough for something. Otherwise, why is the Pentagon’s man standing here? So let’s leave aside for now the likelihood that we are sending the wrong signals to our friends.

If the troops being deployed by the Pentagon are not police, and if they are not military, then what are they large and visible enough to accomplish? And however we answer the question, don’t we already have the marks of a demoralizing mission from a military point of view? Another nonmission with a nonpurpose that troops will be ordered to do?

In fact, the troops will be large and visible enough to stand as uniformed symbols of something. But what? What is being signified in this pure surface of a nonmission in uniform? Collective fear? State identity? Here we begin to see a psy-ops borderland where (in the language of Slavoj Zizek) the real meets reality right along the line where we make our existence into what we need to be.

To answer the question of what this mission is, one must ask the egos of the people for whom this signifying is taking place.

Which brings us to the saddest part nearly, because the saddest thing isn’t the need of millions to see this pure image of the uniform standing between self and the Other. One hardly expects to be free of “friends and neighbors” such as these, who know that they need it.

The saddest part is the indifference of millions for whom, even in times instructive as these, the haunting by this pure, uniformed symbol only serves to ask why we have failed to speak the truth: you’re dead, now go away! Thanks to Austin American-Statesman reporter Mark Lisheron for these quotes taken from the Friday paper. They echo KVUE’s live television report from Camp Mabry: the military is not militarizing.