Last week President Bush, PM Martin of Canada, and Vicente Fox of Mexico met at Baylor University in Waco to announce the "Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America". The transcript of the press conference that followed is here. The press conference doesn't have as much information on the Partnership as the White House press release. The press release mentions some worthwhile goals. However, it also uses the phrase "North America" as if it were a new country. Unfortunately, that might be the ultimate goal of the Partnership and other such plans.

For instance, a task force co-sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations recently released a report calling for a "North American community". This 11/04 article has background on the task force and their plan for a "NAFTA-plus".

And, Vicente Fox has been quite clear about his goals. From a 2000 interview:

"I'm talking about a community of North America, an integrated agreement of Canada, the United States, and Mexico in the long term, 20, 30, 40 years from now. And this means that some of the steps we can take is, for instance, to agree that in five years we will make this convergence on economic variables. That may mean 10 years we can open up that border when we have reduced the gap in salaries and income."

And, from 2002:

Eventually, our long-range objective is to establish with the United States, but also with Canada, our other regional partner, an ensemble of connections and institutions similar to those created by the European Union, with the goal of attending to future themes as important as the future prosperity of North America, and the freedom of movement of capital, goods, services and persons...

Fox would also like to see a common currency. Other Mexican officials have made similar statements, including their "border czar". See 9/27/04's "Mexican official seeks open border" or 7/10/04's "Mexican Official Wants Border Eliminated". Here's what former Mexican foreign minister Jorge Castaneda said in Feb. '02:

"We would like to continentalize as much as possible... We have been pushing for this. And we have been encountering a receptive ear both in Canada and the United States at a certain level of intensity... We would like to move more quickly. We would like to move more deeply."

As for President Bush, see 4/17/01's "Bush envisions Western Hemisphere free trade zone":

President Bush pledged to representatives of nearly every nation in the Western Hemisphere Tuesday that he would press Congress for fast-track trade authority to help create a free trade zone throughout the Americas...

The 2000 article "Spain At Our Border? Fox's Vision For Mexico" by Andrew Reding from the World Policy Institute favoring such continental integration might be interesting. On the other side, see "EU Parallel".

Returning to the White House's SPP press release:

...each nation will establish ministerial-level Security and Prosperity Partnership working groups. The working groups will:

Consult with stakeholders (in the business sector, state and local governments, and non-governmental organizations) in their respective countries...

Is there any group of stakeholders that should be in that list, but isn't? It's a rather large group, and they might be strongly opposed to plans for continental integration.