Too Close for Comfort: Canada's Future Within Fortress North America

Canadas greatest advocate considers our place in Bushs world order.

Not since 1984, when Brian Mulroney went to New York and told a blue-chip business audience that Canada was “open for business,” has there been such a push toward continental integration and a common market for North America. The big business community is eager to use the fear of terrorism to erase the border between our two countries as much as possible. The only conceivable way to do this, as far as the U.S. is concerned, would be to make the border irrelevant by essentially harmonizing our foreign, trade, military, security, social, and resources policies.

What does this really mean? In Too Close for Comfort, the author walks us through the implications and consequences for Canadas sovereignty and shows us how many of the values we hold dear and which tie us together as a nation would be undone. Chillingly, she also shows us how much we have already lost through such policies as the proportional energy-sharing agreement of NAFTA, and she reveals how deep integration could be used to pry open key Canadian policies such as our public health system.

In Too Close for Comfort, Barlow first offers us a clear-eyed view of the issues were facing and then suggests a range of possible solutions for maintaining the kind of country and society we want.

Maude Barlow is the national chairperson of The Council of Canadians, Canadas largest public advocacy organization. She is a director with the International Forum on Globalization, and co-founder of the Blue Planet Project, an international civil society movement to stop the commodification of water. She is the bestselling author of fifteen books.

About This Book

Acknowledgements

1. Fortress North America

Corporate Canada and the Rise of the Christian Right

2. The Wreckage Is Breathtaking

The Neo-­Con Revolution

3. We Have It, We Like It, and Were Going to Keep It

The Aggressive Assertion of American Power

4. Enemy Creep

The Rise of the Corporate Security Complex

5. Left Behind

The War on the Weak

6. Deep Deregulation

Trusting Business to Do the Right Thing

7. Too Late to Panic

Energy and Water Are on the Table

8. A Rogues Gallery

This Revolution Has Been Brought to You By . . .

9. Another Path

Finding Canadas Place in the World

Index