Here come Chinese containers to Great White North
By Jerome R. Corsi
An agreement announced by Transport Canada last month advances toward reality the massive planning that has been done to develop the NAFTA Superhighway in Canada.
A July 30 press release on the website of Transport Canada, the Canadian government's counterpart to the U.S. Department of Transportation, announced the signing of a memorandum of understanding, or MOU, between the governments of Canada and the provinces of Ontario and Quebec to develop the "Continental Gateway and Trade Corridor."
The memorandum noted Ontario and Quebec are "vital contributors to the Canadian economy representing approximately 60 percent of Canada's exports and gross domestic product."
"The main objective of this MOU," the document continued, "is to establish this commercial gateway and trade corridor as a strategic, integrated and globally competitive transportation system that supports the movement of international trade."
The memorandum makes clear that the billions of dollars in toll-road highway construction and infrastructure development contemplated will be financed by private investors, including foreign investment consortia, under the model of "public-private partnerships," or PPPs.
The Ontario-Quebec segment of the Canadian Continental Gateway and Trade Corridor derives from a National Policy Framework for Strategic Gateways and Trade Corridors announced this year by the minority conservative government of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
According to the National Policy Framework, the Ontario-Quebec Continental Gateway and Trade Corridor "encompasses a system of land, air and marine transportation assets, including the Saint Lawrence River and Great Lakes, that offers a competitive and attractive gateway for international trade."
That globalist impulses are driving Canada's National Policy Framework is made clear from the attention the defining statement of the policy gives to NAFTA and world trade, including competition from the European Union
"No country in the world is better positioned than Canada to prosper in the emerging global economy," Harper states in a quote included in the "National Policy Framework for Strategic Gateways and Trade Corridors" posted on the Trade Canada website. "The Gateway Initiative is obviously critical to realizing our potential as a country."
The text clearly explains, "The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the European Union (EU) gave rise to new trading blocs that have underpinned the new integrated global marketplace."
The document also addresses the need to place an integrated North American economy and marketplace into an emerging global marketplace that is increasingly dominated by China and India.
"Coupled with the emergence of new economic powers such as China and India, global marketplace integration is driving the distribution of economic activity, as well as the expansion of world trade," the defining document continues.
As WND has reported, PPPs involve comprehensive development contracts negotiated between governments and private investors, including foreign investors, in which the capital required for transportation infrastructure will be invested by private concerns who will then own the toll right concessions for decades after completion of the project.
The Trans-Texas Corridor, or TTC-35, the four-football-fields wide new truck-train-automobile-pipeline superhighway being built by the Texas Department of Transportation is a PPP promoted by the Federal Highway Administration, in which the billions required for the new toll road are being provided by Cintra Concessiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte, a private investment consortium in Spain.
On April 30, 1992, President George H. W. Bush signed Executive Order No. 12803 on infrastructure privatization, which created PPPs by clearing federal barriers for cities and states to lease public works infrastructure to private investors.
The Canadian National Policy Framework for Strategic Gateways and Trade Corridors shares with the Texas DOT a vision that "intermodal transportation" is one key concept required to understanding the plans now being implemented for building new NAFTA Superhighway infrastructure.
"Intermodal transportation" involves moving containers by a variety of modes of transportation, including ship, airplane, truck and train, without having to repack the containers.
WND has reported the underlying agenda of the multi-national corporations is to redesign and reconfigure NAFTA trade corridors, such as Interstate 35, into new NAFTA Superhighways that will minimize the cost of transporting containers of manufactured goods originating in China and the Far East to their ultimate destinations in North America.
Thus, a container originating in China with low-cost manufactured goods built by Chinese low-cost labor can head toward North American consumers in a container ship across the Pacific Ocean. Unloading the container in Mexican ports, such as Manzanillo and Lazaro Cardenas on Mexico's Pacific coast south of Texas, further reduces costs by using Mexican dock workers to unload the goods and Mexican trucks and Mexican trains to transport the goods north along trade corridor transportation infrastructure, such as TTC-35.
Map highlighting the I-35 corridor from Mexico to Canada.
Newly defined "inland port" cities such as Kansas City, San Antonio, and Denver then become warehousing centers for depositing the Chinese containers, so they can be transported, largely by truck, to their ultimate retailing regional distribution center or local mass market outlet.
The importance of this intermodal transportation concept as a design principal behind the reconfiguration of NAFTA Superhighway infrastructure is evidenced when the Canadian National Policy Framework for Strategic Gateways and Trade Corridors openly states, "With businesses increasingly relying on seamless, secure and efficient multi-modal transportation systems as keys to their success, transportation is being recognized as more than ever to Canada's competitiveness."
It references the Conference Board of Canada, the Canadian equivalent of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, as endorsing this multimodal concept, quoting the Conference Board in their four-volume "Mission Policy" recommendations as stating, "Private industry and all levels of government need to be relentless in pursuing the modernization and coordination of trade, transportation and border infrastructure, including security, as a national priority."
WND has previously reported the North American Competitiveness Council, a group of 30 multi-national corporations hand-picked by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, and the Instituto Mexicano par la Competitividad, was the only group allowed to meet in the closed-door meetings with the leaders, bureaucrats and top-level ministers at the third SPP summit in Montebello, Quebec, on Aug. 20-21.
WND has also reported the ports of Manzanillo and Lazaro Cardenas are managed by the Communist Chinese port operating firm Hutchison Ports Holding, which is involved in a joint venture with Lockheed Martin installing RFID sensors along Interstate 35 to track the progress of Chinese containers from the Mexican ports as they travel the NAFTA Superhighway.
The Ontario-Quebec Continental Gateway and Trade Corridor is part of the Harper "New Government" 2007 budget plan, "Building Canada," designed to invest $33 billion in Canadian transportation infrastructure between 2007 and 2014.
The "Building Canada" infrastructure plan includes $2.1 billion through the Gateways and Border Crossing Fund "to improve the flow of goods between Canada and the rest of the world by enhancing infrastructure at key locations, such as major border crossings between Canada and the United States."
Original Source