 So good afternoon everyone, my name is Carl Meacham and I'm the director here of the CSIS America's program. I'm so glad that you could join us today for this launching, this event which I'm particularly excited about. It's the launching of our latest publication entitled North American Regionalism, Can We Awaken the Sleeping Giant? The report can be accessed in PDF form on our website csis.org forward slash americas and we've also posted it on our Facebook and Twitter. I'm excited to be here, I'm excited to have two of probably my favorite people that I've known for a long time with Pam, Pamela Starr here from USC and with Carlo Dade, a good friend that I've had for some years now from the Canada West Foundation previously from the Canadian Foundation for the Americas which is I think where we met Focal, but with Pamela who really is I would say the preeminent scholar now when it comes to Mexico so this is truly a special occasion to be talking about North America with two of the folks that are probably the most qualified to do so. But why talk about this now? Plenty is going on around the world. You have Ukraine, Syria, Iran. You have a lot going on in the world and here we are talking about North America. Let me tell you why. As many of you know the NAFTA agreement reached a big birthday this year, 20 years though it was controversial when it first was signed. NAFTA has largely come to define the trilateral relationship among Canada, Mexico and the United States and to date it's the only framework in place to define and guide those relations. But a couple of recent developments served as a reminder of how those two decades have been. One of those was the unfortunate passing of Robert Paster, one of NAFTA's intellectual fathers and perhaps the original North Americanist. Long before it was accepted or popular to talk about regionalism from North America he championed the idea that the United States, Canada and Mexico would be best served by acting together in their common interests by the simple virtue of their geography so he said the three were linked and must therefore walk hand in hand. He wasn't wrong when he first made that argument and he wasn't wrong to continue making it through his career. The second development was this year's rendition of the annual North American Leadership Summit, the so-called Three Amigos Meeting. Many hoped that in the context of recent statements from Secretary of State John Kerry and his counterparts the summit would serve as an opportunity to re-evaluate NAFTA and the state of North American regionalism. But those who hoped the summit would see North Americanism brought up, watched that opportunity pass, disappointed by the lack of progress. So at that point we put our heads together and began hammering out this project. How could we address North Americanism in a productive way? How in essence could we further the conversation started by Bob Pastor and his contemporaries and keep North America on the global consciousness? Through these conversations and I would say we didn't always agree on everything but I think we came close enough and developed the basis for this publication which is a thought piece on the current state of North American regionalism and on its prospects both the benefits it would bring and the challenges to achieving them. Before I turn over to each of them to provide their take on Mexican and Canadian sides of the trilateral relationship I just want to provide you with a quick rundown of our publication. As mentioned it's been a full 20 years since the NAFTA began and at this point North American regionalism is far from bringing a priority for any of the three countries and in some ways we can blame NAFTA's success for that but the success has in some ways put the trilateral relationship on autopilot. Nobody really thinks about how to make North America a more viable prospect and while NAFTA steered the continent toward resounding economic strength developments in each of the three countries helped generate a political environment less than conducive to trilateral reform. Mexico perhaps a country with the most to gain from furthering the continental relationship is deeply preoccupied with the ambitious reform agenda currently developing under President Enrique Peña Nieto. I know that PEM will probably give you a complete presentation and wow you with the details but it's clear that implementing this reform agenda is really the priority for the administration and it really isn't doing what we're talking about with North America. Canada's political will is similarly low. Prime Minister Harper's focus just has not been foreign policy oriented and ongoing frustrations over the Obama administration's indecision with things like Keystone certainly don't sweeten the deal. Again Karla will probably go into greater detail on this but I do want to mention that despite the close ties with the United States Canada has much looser ties with Mexico and the administration has been slow to express the sentiment that North America is a table for three and this is a direct quote from Karla a table for three and not a table for two which is catchy and I think hits the nail on the head. That was actually John Manley the head of the Canadian Council for Chief Executive. It's more troubling hearing. So I'm just plagiarizing him then. And as all you know the political divisiveness that has characterized U.S. politics in recent years hardly leaves room for meaningful reform of so large scale particularly given that the trilateral relationship isn't exactly at the forefront of the American political consciousness either. So this in combination with the numerous international crises that have captured the attention of the U.S. have left little room for North America so it's not looking so good for North American regionalism but I hope through this project and through today's session we can bring more awareness about the promise that this kind of relationship could bring. NAFTA was truly revolutionary at the time. It established the biggest free trade area of the world and provided a framework for a trilateral relationship that had long suffered from a lack of definition. It set the tone for the many regional integration efforts that have followed it and there have been many. If we look around the region for instance you see the Pacific Alliance right an innovative trade block inherently Latin American in nature and in membership the Pacific Alliance in many ways the emblematic example of modern trade integration. So we are looking at other things that are going around the world but we're not seeing much progress when it comes to North America. A lot of folks would say that an obvious way forward for the United States, Canada and Mexico is integrating or finding a way to integrate Mexico and then Canada into at least as observers into the transatlantic trade and investment partnership the famous TTIV which is a trade agreement between the United States and Europe. Mexico already has a free trade agreement with the EU and completion of Canada is imminent. A likely scenario in the not so distant future could be an FTA between the NAFTA and the EU. Why not? North America is alive and well but the concept of North Americanism I think this is important to highlight as I conclude the concept of North Americanism which is the notion of a continent that to some extent and in select moments acts and conceives of itself as a collective is far and far poor. 19th century infrastructure and the 20th century framework are dragging down the reality of a 21st century relationship. Today North America as an idea is frailer than at any point since the NAFTA began. So large scale change to that relationship won't be easy. In the report we talk about areas where this can happen. Energy, immigration, trade harmonization and even in areas where you wouldn't think it's so sexy areas such as the states and provinces which can work a lot better together which can help advance the continental agenda and some have already begun that process. Ultimately what I hope you take away from today's event is that there is a common history and culture that we share their energy and compatibility trade relations on the continent and beyond all of these make cooperation between our three countries not just possible but the ideal to which the trilateral relationship should strive. If Canada, Mexico and the US work together North America can solidify its global preeminence but if they allow this relationship to continue to stagnate the North American idea and all the benefits that come along with it may be left behind. So with that I finalize my opening remarks. The rules that we usually have are in place. This is an on the record session. It's webcasted. We will first start off with my co-authors and then we have the great pleasure of having two folks here one from Universal and the other from the Globe and Mail from Canada that are going to comment on our report and I'm going to first go to our folks here and then we'll have that conversation. So without further ado, Payne, the floor is yours. Would you like to do it sitting down, standing up? No, I'm going to sit down. Otherwise I can't look at all of you at once. Great. So let me start just by reminding ourselves a little bit of NAFTA and what it meant to Mexico. NAFTA was a very important event for Mexico. It allowed the country to create a highly competitive export sector that is now one of the more competitive, I don't want to say most competitive, export sectors in the world. Most of you already know the fact that Mexico is the number three exporter of automobiles in the world. And if you actually look at the kinds of things that Mexico exports to the United States, does anybody know what the number one thing Mexico exports to the United States is? What number one category of goods? Do we get those? No, you don't. It just gave me the answer. Car. Automobiles and auto parts. Number two, computers and electronics. That should surprise you because we don't think of Mexico in those terms, but we ought to and it's very much the consequence of NAFTA. But NAFTA left a lot undone in Mexico. It was a very important global reform for Mexico. It opened Mexico up to the world economy. But it left a lot of domestic reforms undone, the domestic reforms that would have allowed for the market to operate more effectively within Mexico. Before I turn to that however, and I do want to talk about the reforms and what Mexico is doing now, let me finish the little bit about why NAFTA has mattered so much from the Mexican perspective. The North American Free Trade Agreement was much more than a free trade agreement. It was a tool to lock in a series of reforms, most important reforms that allowed for Mexico to establish macroeconomic stability for the first time in its, at that point, about 20 years. Mexico ever since then has had stable growth. It has had no major, it had only one major devaluation, but it was immediately in the wake of NAFTA. But since 1994 it has had no major devaluations of the peso. And it has had moderate inflation. It is a stable investment climate. It is a stable economic climate. And that was something that Mexico had struggled to obtain for about 20 years. NAFTA managed to lock in those reforms. And it also locked in the market opening reforms. As Luis Rubio put it actually on my website, the U.S.-Mexico Network, there's that plug in there, I knew I could do it. He said NAFTA was a way for Mexico to borrow American institutions so that investors, consumers and people at large could make decisions in an environment of certainty and with a long-term view. NAFTA was essential to transforming Mexico from what it was to what it is becoming. But second, NAFTA is absolutely essential in transforming the bilateral relationship. Two countries that had historically had an arms-length relationship with one another despite sitting on each other's borders. Countries that preferred to ignore each other rather than engage each other. Countries that cooperated quite irregularly and quite ineffectual, quite irregularly and hesitatingly suddenly were able to cooperate much, much more. From the U.S. perspective, we got a very stable neighbor. We had a neighbor in the 1980s that looked like it could be phenomenally unstable to the point where Jesse Helms was famous for stating that the Central American Civil Wards could just flow through Mexico to the U.S. border and Mexico was sufficiently unstable to make that a believable reality. Now Mexico is a stable strategic partner of the United States. From the Mexican perspective, Mexico no longer has to be the victim of the willfulness of the U.S. government to open and close its markets when it feels like it but rather the United States now sees itself as a partner of Mexico. The relationship has to be completely changed as a result of NAFTA. Now we're in a situation where Mexico very much recognizes how important the North American Free Trade has been for Mexico. Particularly the Mexican government is very much in favor of deepening NAFTA but fully cognizant of the fact that there are two enormous obstacles to being able to make NAFTA much more efficient and much more effective in the 21st century. First was fixing the domestic market economy. Mexico needed to create an economy that was much more competitive, much more efficient, much more capable of enhancing North American competitiveness on the global stage. But also Mexico recognizes that it has to overcome the perception of the North American Free Trade Agreement in the United States and in Canada. So let me talk about the reforms first and then I'll talk about perceptions and then we can think about how we might overcome those perceptual problems. Within Mexico for the better part of the last 20 years we've heard the same thing over and over and over again. Mexico needs to open up its telecommunications sector, open up its energy sector, enhance competition broadly in the economy. It needs to invest in human capital and physical capital. It needs to make the labor market more flexible. Those are the reforms that the government of Enrique Peña Nieto has passed over the last 18 months. I don't want to say that these reforms are miraculous that they are going to transform Mexico into the Aztec Tiger. They are not. There are lots of problems within these reforms and we can look each one of them if you want and detail all the problems. But what's really important I think about them as a group is that they have taken Mexico further and farther toward a competitive efficient market economy than Mexico has ever been at any point in its history. It has taken the Mexican economy and opened it up significantly in the areas of telecommunications already even though the secondary legislation that's needed to actually implement the constitutional reform is still pending. Whatever comes of the energy reform which I expect to be completed by the end of June whatever comes of it for the first time in 75 years in the petroleum sector first time in 50 years in the power sector foreign investors, private investors will be allowed into the production of electricity and the production of petroleum and natural gas. That alone will make a dramatic change. Femmex and the Federal Electricity Commission will have to compete with private petroleum firms private electricity firms. So that in itself is enormously important. The competition commission, the antitrust commission for the first time in its history has real sanctioning power. So it can break up monopolies. I don't expect it to. I expect it to threaten and use that threat to be able to negotiate more effectively with dominant players in the Mexican economy so that they change their behavior so they do not create an anti-competitive context within Mexico. If they challenge the Mexican government this government has demonstrated it will go after those who block it which leads me to education reform. Education reform is very important but it is obviously only part of what Mexico needs but what this reform did is it broke the union's stranglehold over the quality of Mexican education at the primary and secondary level. It completely broke that stranglehold. Now there are some exceptions. There are about four states where it's been difficult to implement the reform but it will come to those states. 28 states is implementing the reform effectively and what the reform means is that teachers will be held responsible for the quality of the education they give to their students and the union no longer has complete control over who gets hired and fired and promoted and when. They are based more on merit than ever before. So a significant step forward in terms of improving the quality of human capital. I'm going to leave my discussion of the reforms there. The big takeaway here is they are exceedingly important but I always caution that not to get overly excited. This is not a miracle cure. It's very important to help Mexico move forward but it does not make Mexico into something other than being Mexico which it always will be. That's just what it is. It's not a good or bad or anything. It just is that country. In terms of on the back of these reforms there's obviously a desire in Mexico to deepen NAFTA to get the greatest advantage out of these reforms because these reforms are making the Mexican economy more competitive and therefore a more effective North American partner. A partner that can help North America become more competitive globally. But to do that and to really take advantage of that NAFTA needs to become much more efficient. As Carl mentioned the border needs to become more porous. We need to have more regulatory harmonization. There's a whole list. Once again it sounds like what we've been saying about reform within the Mexican economy for a long time. We all know what needs to be done and we all know what the core obstacles are. That NAFTA is the n-word in the United States in Canada. Nobody wants to say it because the domestic public, particularly the United States will immediately have a negative reaction to it. I'm not going to go into the details of how or why that happened. Long story short, NAFTA had the supreme misfortune of being implemented at the exact time that China joined the global economy and that dramatic change in the manufacturing sector eliminated manufacturing jobs forever. And NAFTA became associated with those two things. So if you ask most people in the United States what they associate NAFTA with is job losses. Even though that's a red herring. But that perception is there. So the question is how do we overcome those perceptions to be able to move North America forward? I'm just going to throw three things out and we can talk about it later because I know I'm way over time. So we need to get those actors who benefit most from NAFTA involved. That would be the business communities in all three countries. Second, we need to think of more creative ways to expand binational or trinational educational opportunities. I say educational opportunities because bodies don't always have to go abroad to have international interaction among students. I emphasize education because young people's minds are the minds that are most open to new ways of thinking about other countries, other places, other peoples. So we need to work on those who are most willing to think differently about the United States, Canada, Mexico, and North America. And then also in culture. Because if you talk to people who are in the arts for them there already is no border. There are no borders in North America. Arts cross the border and interact and interconnect as if there were no borders. So it's a wonderful, not only example, but it's a place that North America can live and thrive and can provide an example for other areas of integration amongst three countries. So leave my comments there. And we can discuss all of that more later. Carlo. Okay. Thanks, Pam. Thanks, Carl. Thanks for the invitation to co-author and also the chance to come back to Washington. I think if it wasn't for CSIS, I would probably lose whatever connections I have with Washington. So thank you for... Happy to keep them alive. You're doing Canada a favor too, though. I'm sure folks at state and deep aid may disagree, but only good naturally. I'm going to... I promise you that I wouldn't focus just on Keystone and not talk just about Keystone and how important it is and how much of a shock and disappointment it was. So I'll hold to that promise and I will not talk about Keystone and how important it is and what a disappointment it was. The button says I love oil sands. What does that mean? I love oil sands. Coming from Western Canada and coming from Calgary, I wouldn't be allowed back home off the airplane if I didn't have proof that I mentioned Keystone. So now that is off the table. To talk about the paper and the issues in North America and I will touch on Keystone because of its importance, not just for the Canada-U.S. relationship, but more broadly what it says about North America. I'd like to start by reiterating the point that Carl had in his introduction. When talking about North America, it's crucial to define the subject about which you are referring. There's a tendency to conflate NAFTA with North America with the trilateral agenda with bilateral agendas. In the case of this paper, what we're talking about is not NAFTA, but it's the idea of bigger North America. The larger integration project. A project that went beyond turning the bilateral into trilateral and piecemeal basis. It was a vision. It was taking the NAFTA agreement and creating something in trade, a larger vision of North America. The argument I think that I've made and that is somewhat echoed in the paper is that it's that larger vision that is dead. Some people also claim that NAFTA is also dead and it's been a failure. I think there is indeed much evidence to support that view. If you look at the lack of growth in trade within North America since NAFTA was signed, if you look at the lack of bilateral trilateral meetings and institutions since NAFTA has been signed. Of course I'm being sarcastic. It's just the opposite that's the case. So there is no question that NAFTA has been successful largely in what it was designed to do. Promote trade and the baseline of integration that would allow more competitiveness, prosperity on all three sides of the border. The larger issue though and it's been that way since NAFTA was signed. We tend to forget how controversial the agreement was. In the case of Canada we signed a bilateral treaty with the United States over which we had an election that was extremely close. So going beyond that and having an agreement with NAFTA with Mexico was even more controversial. We have to remember that on the Canadian side NAFTA was not viewed as an opportunity, a new frontier. The signing was more of a defensive move by Canadians worried about losing a privileged position in the United States by the inclusion of Mexico in an agreement. The idea of North America as Carl alluded to as a table for two or a table for three is a discussion that is still underway in Canada. The quote table for two versus table for three was from not bad Britain, I think it was two years ago by Ben Hemsom who is one of the deans of Canadian foreign policy. He's an academic but extremely influential in Canada. And John Manley, who at the time was with the Canadian Chamber and is now with the Council of Chief Executives the premier, the peak Canadian business organization. So this view of Mexico and its place in North America is something that's been contentious in Canada for quite some time. There of course has been pushback against the idea that Mexico is a threat or that Mexico will derail a North American agenda or that Mexico is not at the point where it's ready to join us on a more ambitious integration level. But the tide in that battle has turned only recently. I would say it's been in the last year that the last vestiges of the old garden Canadian foreign policy have come around to the view that Mexico is and should be a full partner in North America. The changes that we've seen in Mexico arguably now a majority middle class country. A country that's enacting reforms that are generating attention. A new seriousness in the representation that's been sent to Ottawa. The signs are there and Canadians have been slow to pick up on it but the tide is fully turned. So it's interesting that we're at a moment in North America now of welcoming Mexico. Mexico is a stronger partner in North America is there. The question is, has the moment passed for a more ambitious trilateral agenda? And that's an open question. I tend to think on the Canadian side while the view is shifted it may just be a little too little, too late. But in talking about North America there are several in the paper that I'd like to emphasize is something that tends to get overlooked in discussions about North America both in terms of integration and both in terms of making the bilateral agendas trilateral and dealing with specific irritants. There is some question as to how successful NAFTA's been recently has the project stalled. The smallness of the issues over which we fight given the trade flows given the movement of people between states, given the rising competitiveness. There's so much at stake and we have done so much when we've created a project that is in many ways extremely successful yet what seems to gather attention are the little issues. So as we say in the paper the smallness of what divides us has come to overwhelm the largeness about which unites us in North America. We forget about the trade flows. We hear the numbers and they go in one year and out the other. Issues like Keystone which are critical to western Canada and I can't emphasize how important we view the delays in Keystone and having the pipeline come through. But even that as important as it is there has to be a recognition that in the larger context of North America there was a lot more there on the table country of origin labeling the other irritants, softwood the continuing irritants that we have in the United States are problems but in most other trade parts around the world you'd be happy to have these problems. If this is the worst thing to befall you with your trade integration group in Asia or in Africa or parts of South America that would be a good day. So we tend to lose sight of that in North America and it's a luxury that we have because we have done relatively well. But yet the irritants are there and the irritants are causing serious problems especially for the private sector. Things like Keystone the Food Security Modernization Act in the U.S. These irritants, the movement of people issues the Canadian imposition of visas on business in Mexico these issues harm business they harm our competitiveness at a time when we're seeing other countries finally get their act together the Pacific Alliance parts of Asia. So we can no longer afford the luxury of being complacent about the smaller issues in North America. But what's interesting when we talk about North America we look at problems in the country of origin labeling lack of movement on Keystone the Ambassador Bridge there are successes in North America and the more we look at the sub-national level state-provincial relations the more we find in terms of success and movements on key issues. But yet our focus groups like CSIS my former organization that are placed in national capitals tend to start and end their analysis at the federal level Washington Ottawa we don't look outside and see what's happening elsewhere but if you want to see progress on resolving issues state-provincial is the place to look we in Canada do not know how many agreements Canadian provinces have signed with Mexican states we don't keep a record that the provinces are not required nor would they check in with Ottawa when they sign foreign agreements in the US there is some record but we don't have good analysis in Mexico the states are required to check in with SRE the Mexican Foreign Ministry but still an analysis of the sub-national arrangements what is working what's been successful we can point to some things not in energy and oil but innovation and technology there are other agreements that Canadian provinces have signed Manitoba has agreements on agricultural cooperation and technology Bahá California and British Columbia have agreements on criminal justice so there are a full range of areas that are either under the jurisdiction of sub-national entities or that are contested but federal and national have joint jurisdiction where there are possibilities for provinces and states to do a lot more the other examples are trilateral we have the council of state governments that has participation from groups and groups like the western climate initiative where six Canadian provinces have some form of membership this is a US-led initiative and all of the northern Mexican states are members of a policy on greenhouse gas emissions in North America it's going to come from the state provincial level it is de facto policy if Ontario, Quebec, Alberta British Columbia I think Nova Scotia is also on board can agree with US states and six Mexican states you could wind up having de facto policy for global greenhouse gas emissions so these are the types of things that can be done on a provincial level the other point is we tend to think about what cannot be done foreign policy is the provision of federal entities of national entities yes, except of course in the case of Quebec but you always have to make exceptions about Quebec but foreign affairs is not necessarily the sole jurisdiction of national entities the management of day-to-day issues as they occur but the opportunity to reach out abroad and to conduct management of international issues is not the sole jurisdiction of the national in any of the three countries though in Mexico it's a lot more difficult US states don't have the same powers that Canadian provinces do there are still possibilities thinking about what can be done as opposed to what can't be done is important at the sub-national level or as they say in Quebec it's better to ask forgiveness than to ask for permission and Quebec has actually gone ahead and signed its own agreements for immigration Alberta is working on something similar with the movement of decommissioning US soldiers to Alberta to work in the oil sands an agreement that was negotiated actually at the provincial level and then moved to the federal level with creativity and initiative especially with issues that won't move at the federal level where there are agreements at the sub-national or at the regional level we need to start thinking about how to work through sub-national actors to start moving on some of these issues and there are possibilities if we get creative and we use the powers out of there and if we're necessary we ask for forgiveness instead of permission let me stress though that this is not done at the expense of or against national interest it's simply a case where we each have a list of 10 priorities in western Canada in Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan Ottawa has a list of 10 priorities the priorities are the same but the order may be different so something that is number one on our list in the west may be number three or four in Ottawa so there's a possibility to work on issues that are in common but the emphasis is not necessarily there and the resources aren't necessarily there there are also some issues that simply work better when a governor and a premier sit down together they're focused on hard geographic realities hard economic realities and the ability of premiers and governors to focus on things is a lot better than a national agenda where you have a lot more to look at so I would close by saying that looking at the sub-national level is hugely important if you want to have success this is a conversation I had with Robert Pastor before he passed in it wasn't so much a conversation given Robert's view he was quite critical of this but I think where we left the conversation was we haven't been happy with the success in moving North America from the status quo we agree that it's done well to get here but moving it forward becoming more competitive used to be the Pacific Alliance and others has been problematic we need a plan B and the state, provincial the sub-national agenda is an area that I think is right for moving and solving specific issues especially issues that affect competitiveness issues that are particular to a region and in the West we do share values we share views and we share a focus on Asia, on energy on the environment and the people that differs from centers and differs from the capitals so there is an ability differs by this not anti-theatrical to the national interest but there is an ability to move on these issues at the sub-national level if anything comes from the report I'd like to see more attention focused on that, thank you Glenn, thank both of you for your super comprehensive opening remarks I'm just going to ask a couple questions Pam is there a sense in Mexico or would you say that there's an interest in promoting a North American idea for Mexicans and for the Mexican foreign policy establishment I mean is it an objective to have this sort of North American relationship that goes beyond something like the NAFTA? There are two answers to that question in the sense that Mexico is willing and interested in being part of North America it will always aggressively try to be more than that it'll try to be a part of Latin America it'll try to be as this government is aggressively trying to demonstrate in its foreign policy it wants to be a leader of emerging markets in the world it's building up its relationship with China and Turkey and with Russia and such but it is geographically part of North America it is economically part of North America it has a big chunk of its population throughout North America it is part of North America but it doesn't think of itself as North American that said the Mexican population thinks of itself as North American more than the population of the United States or Canada so it's a complicated answer it's not that the government is saying we are no longer Mexicans we ought to be North Americans first or even Mexicans first and North Americans second but there is this underlying subtext to the recognition of what is in Mexico's national interest One of the things that you said Carlo that was that you emphasized are these relationships with the province relationships and the development of that and how we should lessen the importance of those relationships but you also mentioned things like rules of origin and that's an issue that keeps on coming up in Mexico, in the United States and in Canada of how do we move this relationship forward is there something that can happen at the state level to promote this issue or is it something that we just have to handle and try to push at the federal level that's one of the issues that will fall to the Fed there are limited things that the provinces can do they can impede if agreements are reached they can do things to impede they can also propose an agenda so if you were to have a discussion amongst a core group of subnational entities and they came up with solutions that should make it easier at the federal level also if there's movement at the subnational level if there's agreement it turns the tables on the feds well Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia, Alberta 20 US states and 15 states of Mexico can't come up with something how about it so again thinking creatively there are things that cannot be touched because they are the sole jurisdiction of the feds that can creatively get to the issues and as we have more contact more interaction we can get to the point when this can happen the issue though is the ability to manage the policy so affairs dealing today the issues policy thinking out ahead proactive that differs widely between the Canadian provinces which have strong international affairs departments you know the Western Canada, Alberta has a foreign affairs unit that's larger than some Central American states Quebec has more people working, government officials provincial officials working on international affairs than do all 50 US states combined so the capacity is strongest in Canada it's somewhat strong in the US but Mexico is weak so the imbalance between the subnational entities is probably the largest impediment I would say even larger than the tendency of Mexican governments to centralize power and to not allow room for the states to do more I'm just going to move forward here we're lucky to be joined by Jaime Hernandez from Mexico's Illinois New York South and Paul Koring by the Global Mail from Canada I just want to get your reactions to this I mean this is not an issue that comes up that the different components of these discussions come up constantly the issue of immigration reform is one that you have come up more and more with the United States and with Mexico you have the Keystone issue you have a gentleman here with a pin promoting reform but you have these issues coming up over and over and over again it just seems like they're bilateral but there's obviously that we get from the progress of these issues the North American infrastructure for energy for instance it's a conversation that we're going to start to have to have with the Mexican energy reform but then the movement of people and the conversations that we're having here with immigration reform so I just want to get your reactions to what we said the report and see if there's anything that you're seeing here that we're not or that comes out as being any different than how we're looking at the issue I think that is very when you read the report I think it's really good for the moment I think it reflects a lot of the people who are thinking right now but I have to talk I don't have the academic approach I don't have the approach of journalists what the people say and I think that for most of the people in Mexico I think when you talk about NAFTA they understand this like it's kind of it's a story of winners and losers even in the government people like Elefonso Guajardo is responsible of the economy but there is two Mexicans a Mexico that has one with this treaty and another Mexico with 50 million people that is living in poverty so I think that the perception, the narrative reflects this ambiguity of the people about NAFTA a lot of things have changed since 1994 I remember that Carlos Alonso Vartari in the beginning he was talking of this kind of promised land Mexico will be part of the first world and 20 years later this promised land we haven't arrived at that promised land but at the same time it's true that the middle class has a Walmart effect and less people is coming to the United States looking for jobs and I think that in that sense NAFTA has been good I think that we can say that from Mexico and United States we can agree that NAFTA has been good not so good for Mexico and maybe really good for much better for the United States and this ambiguity for me is fascinating because I remember El Universal they conducted a poll in December it was fantastic the findings because I have here 50% of the people they believe that the treaty has been really good in the United States 50% and only 9% thinks that this has been good for Mexico only 9% but the fascinating is that 50% they think well what about if we have a referendum today or tomorrow what do you think you will vote in favor of NAFTA 50% say yes of NAFTA so it's true that most of the Mexicans thinks that this relation with the United States and also with Canada has been unfair and when you think about for example the border after the terrorist attacks in 2001 the border gosh it's a nightmare you know Pamela sometimes you have to spend three or four hours in the border just to cross from Tijuana to San Diego and and the immigration reform it's a long long story and we don't understand we don't understand why when I was correspondent in Spain in the 90s I was covering all this process of the European Union and you know when the German decided we were going to put a lot of money to I don't know infrastructure for Spain or Portugal or Greece and here was not the case we only we are talking about only of competitiveness and what about the development now I think that right now I think that the question is to know why we have to talk about the operating enough I think that the question is why now and I think that why now is because we are watching China that is already in the hemisphere the Russians also are trying to once again re-engage with the hemisphere and I think that for the Mexican government and the United government and Canada I think less Canada we think that is important upgrade but I think that watching the report I think that from the point of view from the Mexican part we have to put on the table the subsidies because for the Mexican government they say well what about the subsidies agricultural subsidies and because we are talking about the regulations more regulations but you are listening a growing number of people talking about this so in short I would say that everybody thinks that until now the NAFTA has been good not so fair for Mexico but everyone knows that we have to be there what are the perspectives from the Canadians I should say at the outset that I haven't lived in Canada for most of the last 30 years so I tend to write for them but to properly reflect the country I probably can't do what I will try and do is just make two or three counterpoints to some of the things that have been said it's often instructive to watch politicians who care a lot about how they are playing at home and I think the manifest disinterest that surrounded the last three Amigos summit shouldn't be dismissed all three of those politicians are certainly the Canadian and American leaders wanted it to be over this was not a great opportunity this was an exercise in okay we got to do this let's limit the damage the second thing I would say and I have spent a lot of time in Europe at the same time you were there the world is littered with organizations and treaty arrangements that have kind of lived their usefulness but nobody ever wants to say oh god let's shut that down there's a lot of ideas behind the European Union frankly even the big idea behind NATO the big idea about North Americanism all these things you know no one ever wants to say okay that worked it suited a time and place and maybe it's not the right vehicle or the right arrangement to move forward there's lots of people in Europe looking back at Maistricht and saying you know we probably shouldn't have done common monetary policy without common fiscal policy and there's plenty of people in NATO right now shaking their heads and saying we really are going to go to war for Latvia or not things time often grow beyond their original vision and sometimes they create new problems I guess the third thing I would say is there's clearly two fundamentally vital bilateral relationships going on here it may be that there's two tables for two and may not be a bad thing the underlying notion that a table for three that somehow North Americanism is by definition better than two powerful bilateral relationships structured perhaps differently with a third bilateral relationship again the Mexico relationship which is frankly far less important to either country underpinned by far less trade far less common history far less common there is no common border that kind of thing it may be that two tables for two is a more practical solution moving forward even if it is unpopular with the elites and the intelligentsia I mean it's like Trilateralism has got such a nice sound to it I guess the I guess the next thing I would say is that big ideas drive organizations or treaty arrangements can't always achieve it off the bat I mean people are still working on making NAFTA work as much of a success as it has been tinkering around the edges doesn't revitalize a piece of ideology so unless you can make a really powerful argument of a North America with say a common security policy I mean can anybody really imagine Mexico in NORAD right now or North America with open borders and free movement if you don't have big ideas it's very very hard to engage beyond the elites in terms of selling something now those ideas may be perfectly justified I'm not here to say they are or they're not but kind of talking about harmonizing regulatory policies on dairy exports and you know the size of drill bits those are all good things but they're not going to underpin some renaissance for North Americanism so on that rather kind of underwhelming note oh it's a good note thank you, thank you I just looked at the time we've been talking for a little over an hour and I would like to include the folks that are in the audience and get a couple questions before we end so I'm going to start here on the front can you just get a microphone thank you very much my name is Victoria Rietig I'm the director of this extremely rich discussion and also for the counter proposal that came in at the ending it's been very enjoyable to this two ideas stuck out for me and they stuck out for me one from Pam and one from Karlo and they stuck out for me because at the migration policy institute I'm in charge of the so-called regional migration study group which is MPI's core initiative in the region focusing especially on Canada and across Central America so the two ideas that were mentioned and that kind of weave through my work every day is on the one hand the increased trilateral educational opportunities that you mentioned towards the end of your comment and on the other hand the idea that maybe we should look less at a national level solution or cooperation but more at province state level now having said that keeping this short of the comment so the question is simply could you flash out more of these ideas of specific educational cooperation were you just thinking of the 100,000 strong initiative or are there other things that you could talk about and the same on your hand in which areas do you see the most promising ways of cooperation happening on provincial state level thank you in terms of educational cooperation there are multiple levels there are multiple challenges just start the bottom and work my way up when we're talking about children in primary and secondary school there is a whole there are tens of thousands of children that we share between the United States and Mexico much less true in the Canada but these are children who were either educated for a good part of their life in the United States and then deported with their parents or they are children who were educated in one country or another and then split because of a divorce but whichever it is the children that increasingly are getting part of their education in Mexico and part of the United States and there is absolutely no coordination whatsoever there and it's very detrimental to the education of the children so how do we manage that better second is the actual issue of study abroad and going abroad because one of the problems we have and we think of the idea of the North American idea is having the attitude about our community in North America that we are all North American or at a minimum that we are all equal partners on this continent and every all three of the countries are arrogant about themselves they know that they are culturally superior to the other two they strongly dislike being treated as if they were not the culturally superior and you constantly feed into that and one of the things that you overcome is through this appreciation of one another study abroad is expensive but we can do things like have children in their junior and senior years of high school go to one of the other countries for the summer or for a month and go to parts of the country that are very different from where they are from you can have grants that encourage graduate studies about the other one of the things that is really striking in education is the dearth of Mexican studies in the United States and Canada and the dearth of US studies in Mexico it is really important to each other and we know we are important but we do not understand each other and we make no attempt to do so so that is what I am thinking of and then the standard study abroad at university but also using technology so you can create joint projects in courses whether it courses in engineering courses in healthcare courses in medicine whatever it is not just in US Mexico studies so that you have the interaction because we have shared problems and the more we interact to deal with those problems the more we can appreciate that the solution can be found by working together and communicating and learning from one another so to pick up on education in Canada education is the jurisdiction of the provinces there is no ministry of education each province sets education policy so in terms of moving on migration one of the issues is our attraction of foreign students especially in parts of Canada where we need migration where we need workers we need people the bringing in students at the secondary level post-secondary level is actually a vehicle for immigration so the provinces have a tool to bring people into Canada in the provinces to study to gain work experience green card status and then to move them to immigration so in terms of that vehicle for professionals the provinces have a great lover in addition in terms of skills recognition credentials for jobs this is an area that also falls under the provinces so it's a major problem for Canadian immigration we have federal immigration officers citizenship and immigration abroad and embassies and high commissions recruiting people to come to Canada based on job surveys at a national and then the folks wind up in Winnipeg where they wind up in St John or St John's and the requirements to work in the province are different than what they were led to believe at the recruitment level abroad so if you have the ability to target specific countries with credential recognition you will in de facto leverage certain countries in terms of the success of immigrants in the labour market in your province so there are lovers that the provinces can pull and credentials is one of the temporary farm workers program is another the provinces have a great deal of leeway in terms of influencing decisions at the federal level with the temporary farm workers program despite the recent problems that we've had the demand for workers in the west is so substantial and so different from the rest of Canada that that level will continue to be on the table in addition you have initiatives Quebec in essence before RTTIP before the Canada EU pre trade agreement Quebec in essence went to Europe and signed its own labour mobility agreement ahead of the feds and the feds were first forced to in essence deal with it after they had been signed and it was doing something similar with decommissioning US soldiers the ability to set an agenda and then to have Ottawa follow so we have a great deal of more room on the trilateral level I see a possibility in the future of our infrastructure the demands in Canada with the oil sands if we get any of the plays on LNG liquid natural gas in British Columbia any of the export plays will be immense on top of the infrastructure needs we already have improvement in ports bridges and roads and another rail line Mexico was looking at 300 billion was that the proposal by the government for infrastructure so huge huge demand and if the US ever gets its act together for infrastructure I don't see how we're going to be able to juggle this simultaneously have three separate workforces for the mega projects that we're looking at so I think there could be pressure there to have greater mobility in the trades especially associated with infrastructure and construction I simply don't see any way that we can do it if we have LNG if we have the oil sands continue to develop if Mexico spends the money it's talking about on rail and other things and if the US gets its act together at all in infrastructure you look at the workforce it simply doesn't work without moving people back and forth Hector and up your front I think that'll be it thank you thank you Hector Shamis from Georgetown I have a comment and I would like to ask you to reflect on it because it's not a question basically a region is more than a trade agreement and a pipeline and tariffs and regulations a region is a normative order fundamentally and one of the big criticisms I was also a friend of both pastors so one of the most common criticisms that he had to face was that he would say Bob that's not a region and he fought against that his life since he started with this idea about 15, 10, 15 years ago I think that the metaphor of the two tables captures that that there is no one table for three because there is not a common normative order that can constitute that region but there are two separate sub-normative orders that does capture that precisely which is the border regions Texas is a region or Texas if you know Jaime would say and I in a way this is the the title of the meeting reflects that reawakening a giant well I mean it's not sleeping has a manual from scratch that is not a region it's a trade agreement it's not even a customs union and maybe there is something called path dependency and this is what you see is that deeper level or larger level normative component when I say norms I mean norms, institutions, organizations ways of doing things regardless of language and other things that is not there hasn't been from the beginning of this institution after and hasn't developed so perhaps this is the problem of a giant sleeping giant thank you let me get the gentleman up here in front who had a question and then we'll be able to do both since we're running a little bit at a time hello my name is Josep Alido I work for Matsui & Co I wanted to ask about the energy reforms is this the way that there might be more integration in the North American region bringing in that investment from the US and Canada into Mexico thank you very much let me do energy first we have a quick answer to the question we were talking about North America there is no North American energy platform at present and the Mexican reforms are going to create a North American energy platform they create opportunities for US and Canadian other foreign firms to enter into the Mexican market but right now we don't have a tri-national energy market there are parts of the market that are bi-national but in general that is a large tri-national market let me use energy to try and tackle both questions the reforms are generating interest in parts of Canada and the reforms are not just hydrocarbons it's electricity, it's renewables so the Mexican government we're actually working very closely with them in Alberta and they're going to come up to Calgary on June 2nd to do a presentation on the reforms and we've been working with them to do some research and opportunities for Western Canada they've chosen Calgary as the first place outside of Mexico to do a foreign presentation on the reforms which will be tabled but won't be passed so I think that in some ways the idea of North America the idea that three countries share things not everything but perhaps idiosyncratically but perhaps where there is enough commonality that the closeness, what we've gone through over the past 20 years creates privileges and it creates preferences within North America and this is what I think we're seeing with energy reforms the fact that they chose Canada as the first stop I don't think would have come other than the relationship with Africa other than the fact that Alberta has established offices has a foreign office in Mexico City and one in Helisco so I think that some of the things that we've done in Africa have led to this sort of de facto arrangement Table for two works for some issues and some issues require a table for three the problem with the bigger idea for North America is that we thought if we don't have a table for three for everything it's been a failure but there has to be a recognition that some issues the Arctic I don't see having a seat for Mexico at a discussion about the Arctic but energy rules of origin if we have three separate agreements with the European Union three separate rules of origin three separate accumulation with the EU does that really work? some things require a table for three but not everything I would share that viewpoint I do think that there's so many things that we have in common and one of the issues that was raised in the writing of this and we had this good email discussion with Pamela and with Carla was how urgent these things really are and the reality is that if we don't make these reforms tomorrow it doesn't mean that much is going to change but as we look into the future and the midterm in particular the things that we have in common the challenges that we have the issues that we have with energy the issues that we have with the movement of people the commonalities that we have with culture and it's not the Southwest anymore only when you're looking at demographic changes in the United States during the last ten years the way that Americans of Hispanic descent and the majority of those Americans are of Mexican descent how it's increased that will be felt in the country and the country is evolving the way it has when it did with Italian Americans or with any other group the only issues that these folks we share a border with Mexico some of these changes are not by choice it's just a reality that we're going to have to deal with so it's taking the positives as you mentioned, Carlo not for everything as you mentioned, but for other issues it's just a necessity to have to deal with the three countries together because it does work for own benefit and it pretty much is something that we all have in common so that's how I would look at that issue sorry the other importance is we look at the TPP and the rise of a Trans-Pacific or Pacific Rim Trading Group the reality is that it's important but agreements this large are based on sub-regional groupings global supply chains start with regional supply chains and the basis for our trade in Asia is going to be through North America so while the larger issues of the region may not be there in terms of competitiveness in terms of being able to deal with the Pacific Alliance, the RCP the other trade groups, ASEAN, as it gets sub-regional entities not sub-national but sub-regional entities regional supply chains are the basis for global competition especially in a world where the price of oil is at $100 a barrel the idea of globalization gets confined more to regionalism and from regionalism to globalization so if we go to NAFTA without first strengthening North America as a basis for regional supply chains and we are integrated it's not just all those it's also commodities it's also air rim, blackberry we're not going to compete well unless we get a regional act together I think you raised exactly the right question which is that this isn't about structures or organizations or agreements or treaties how people view themselves unless and until there's a sense of North America and North America then this is an artificial experiment now that doesn't mean it will work I mean you get people who ardently defend the European Union as something that started out as the dream of a handful of elite and certainly there are big chunks of western Europe where the generation the post-Coval generation has embraced and self-identified as being European and so that may very well be the kind of model of what works but there are also big, big chunks of Europe that think this is overdone, overgrown and everybody's got buyer's remorse and so I'm not suggesting that it's a two or three table thing I'm suggesting that it won't be validated North Americanism doesn't get any validation unless and until ordinary people start thinking of themselves as North Americans I don't know anybody I don't know a single soul that's American and if they did, if somebody said that to me I wouldn't know what they meant and I don't think anybody else would I'm going to follow up on that because I'm going to be very skeptical of what you just said because Europeans don't call themselves Europeans they call them German, French they don't think of themselves as Europeans poll after poll they identify themselves with their national identity not as a European identity there are people in their 20s who get bigger spikes in the polls but generally I agree with you and then the other thing is to emphasize when we talk about the North American idea it's not creating a North American identity that's not at all what the book is about his point was that the fact that we don't see ourselves as sharing North America as having something in common inhibits our ability to effectively work together where and when we need to work together so I mean I just started saying Hector but I also don't want it to get too far off I see what Bob's book is about is saying that the lack of this normative sense of we are sort of all in it together and we need to work in together is inhibiting our ability to work together so how do we create that normative concept and Bob and I have long conversations about that as well because I don't think we should figure out how we do that I have an interesting idea but I don't think we have a quite figured it out we need a microphone I don't agree with the need to do that and I'm not saying it won't ever happen all I'm saying is that there is a strong path dependency with the original intent and design which was a trade agreement where the most important of the three countries the United States didn't ever mean that to be anything else which wasn't the case of Europe either but in the process many more players made it more viable and more dynamic and there you have it you're right on the poles absolutely about the Europeans but I want to challenge you saying that when you land in a European airport they have a special line there is no line for when you land in Buenos Aires you get more citizens and it's a joke right and what is that it's a mimicry of that but you know well look if we have done one thing it starts this conversation again and I think that was sort of the objective that we wanted and getting all these viewpoints out and talking I think also the memory of Dr. Pastor I think is also very important I think we achieved both things this discussion will continue I think it's the right thing it's inevitable that we are going to have to be dealing with these issues either as agreements or either as something that we're going to have to talk about within the context of an identity because I think it's part of the discussion not the focal part of the discussion but part of the discussion I want to thank you I want to thank all of you for coming I want to thank Paul I want to thank Jaime Carlo Pamela you guys have been great it's been a really good discussion and I hope you enjoyed it thank you very much