I ... had a chance to go out to Banff, where yesterday and today actually, Canada, the United States and Mexico held the second session of the North American Forum.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the North American Forum, it sprang up as a parallel structure to the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America. It was originally an effort to bring opinion-makers, private-sector leaders, university professors and presidents, and leaders of NGOs [non-governmental organizations] together with government officials from the three countries of North America to begin to talk about North American security and to begin to see if there was some way that together, the governments working with the private sector and universities and NGOs could begin to create a vision for North America and an understanding of what North America is as an entity and then how governments could be working better together to fashion more productive cooperation and address the kinds of problems we saw in the immediate aftermath of September 11.

There are three convenors or co-convenors for this. On the U.S. side it's former Secretary of State [George] Schultz [sic], on the Mexican side it's former Finance Minister Pedro Aspe, and on the Canadian side it's the former Premier of Alberta Peter Lougheed. The first session was held last year in Sonoma. This year it's held in Banff. Next year it will be held in Mexico.

- State Department's Shannon Addresses "Why the Americas Matter", Cadieux Auditorium, September 14, 2006

A North American Advisory Council. To ensure a regular injection of creative energy into the various efforts related to North American integration, the three governments should appoint an independent body of advisers. This body should be composed of eminent persons from outside government, appointed to staggered multiyear terms to ensure their independence. Their mandate would be to engage in creative exploration of new ideas from a North American perspective and to provide a public voice for North America. A complementary approach would be to establish private bodies that would meet regularly or annually to buttress North American relationships, along the lines of the Bilderberg or Wehrkunde conferences, organized to support transatlantic relations. (Emphasis mine)

The Business Council on National Issues (BCNI) was an important lobbying group in Canada. They are most notable for their pro-free trade advocacy during the Prime Ministership of Brian Mulroney that led to the introduction of the Canadian-American Free Trade Agreement. During this period they were led by Tom D'Aquino. In the 1988 Canadian election the BCNI spent millions of dollars on advertisements in support of free-trade. It is now known as the Canadian Council of Chief Executives.

The Canadian Council of Chief Executives is the premier business lobby group in Canada. They hold tremendous sway over internal and external trade practices. Statistics Canada shows that in 2001 just 4% of all Canadian businesses accounted for 82% of exports. The majority of those 4% are members of the CCCE.

Corporations intervene politically everywhere in the world wherever they have interests. It is part of doing business. In Canada, every industry has had its methods and key issues. But what if they could all intervene just once, in order to secure a law that could render them super-citizens, that would make interventions on hundreds of separate issues virtually unnecessary?

That is essentially what the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (FTA) promised. It has been called a bill of rights for corporations, but even this description underestimates its eventual impact. In effect, the FTA allowed corporations to begin the final stage of opting out of the social contract altogether. It established the principle that corporations had no inherent obligations to nation-states in which they did business. They had all the legal rights of citizens but had the obligations waived. It was a kind of unilateral declaration of transnational corporate citizenship. (Dobbin, 46)