Public Comments

I am responding to the CEC announcement because I spent some time, during the first decade of the implementation of the CEC, working quite closely with the Commission on issues which I understood to be relevant to aboriginal constituencies in the development of themes for cooperation between Canada, Mexico and the United States in areas of common environmental interests. [...] If the CEC is now committed to the development of a long-range strategy for the development and implementation of environmental strategies of common interest to the three major jurisdictions, both the JPAC and the CEC as the body responsible for administration and coordination may want to revisit the issue of involving indigenous or aboriginal constituencies. [...] I hope that any future international climate conferences does not fail again because of the vested interest of the fossil fuel industry or because of some political idiosyncrasy by one or another government – the old tobacco type of lobbying has to stop! In the meantime the anticipated dislocations in the financial sector, the labour-force deployment and the socio-economic aspects in general could. [...] My brief remarks are confined to two critical challenges to the implementation process, the lack of proper financial support for the CEC and the reluctance of the NAFTA Parties to support the work of the Commission and allow the NAAEC to function as originally intended and written. [...] Lack of Full Cooperation by the NAFTA Parties The members of the CEC, presumably at the direction of the NAFTA governments, have consistently refused to cooperate with and support the work of the Commission where citizen submissions are involved.