Ideally, the North American Leaders Summit, recently concluded in Guadalajara, and the upcoming Border Governors Conference in Monterrey this week are but complementary halves (or, more accurately, quarters) of a “whole of government” solution to North American issues: the Summit envisions and sets a top-level priority list and Conference implements specific, local and customized solutions to a number of challenges.

Local Solutions are Often Better Solutions

Embassy Magazine: The SPP's Death Knell has Sounded

Rick Van Schoik and a number of NACTS partners are quoted in an extensive article on the demise of the Security and Prosperity Partnership in  Embassy, Canada's foreign policy magazine.

Two articles from last week on our neighbors' diverging economic situations:

Hermosillo's El Imparcial reported that this could be Mexico's worst recession since the Great Depression, while The Globe and Mail reports that employment is looking up in Canada while U.S. employment numbers continue to look bad.

And then a very interesting article in yesterday's New York Times about Mexico's shift on drug policy.

We’re All North Americans, Now More Than Ever
by Rick Van Schoik, Director

What an ideal time for President Obama to go to Mexico to meet with the other two North American leaders! The U.S. public and Congress are in a protectionist funk, yet the President can and must continue to explore how the United States can effectively benefit from our interactions with all nations, particularly our immediate neighbors. He can join his fellow leaders to the north and south to show us here at home and to our friends and enemies around the world what it means to be neighborly.  He can in fact convince us “homeland-centric” Americans that we are North Americans.

“North America Next: A Report to President Obama on Building Sustainable Security and Competitiveness" was released on Tuesday, Feb. 10 by the North American Center for Transborder Studies (NACTS) at Arizona State University at an official “Newsmaker" event hosted by the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The report represents more than a year of consultations by NACTS' consortium of leading experts and universities in the three countries and covers major tri-national challenges including border security, trade, energy, labor/migration, transportation and infrastructure and environmental protection.

The report was presented at the Newsmakers event by NACTS Director Rick Van Schoik, with commentary provided by Roberta Jacobson, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Canada, Mexico and NAFTA; Mexican Embassy Head of Economic Affairs Antonio Ortiz Mena; and Colin Robertson, a senior Canadian diplomat currently directing the Canada-US project at Carleton University in Ottawa.

A large number of local and national news outlets have been reporting that Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano will be nominated by President-elect Obama to head the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. NACTS was asked to comment on this possibility by several Phoenix media outlets, including 12 News, Univision 33, and radio stations KTAR and KFYI.

It is important to remember that the auto industry in the U.S. is really a North American industry, with components criss-crossing our borders with Canada and Mexico several times before the manufacturing process is complete. Time has an article on the suffering going on north of the border in the province of Ontario.

An important article on the new megaport at Punta Colonet, Baja California by Marla Dickerson is in this morning's LA Times:

Mexico's government is setting sail with the largest infrastructure project in the nation's history, a $4-billion seaport that it hopes will one day rival those of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

President Felipe Calderon is scheduled to travel to northern Baja California today to open bidding on a development that his administration hopes will catapult Mexico into a major player in North American logistics.

We extend our hearty congratulations to the Chair of NACTS Board of Advisors, Raul Rodriguez, who was just named to represent the state of Tamaulipas before an important new group, the Council of Economic Advisors for the Border Governor's Conference. The Border Governors Conference (BGC) is an important binational venue made up of the ten U.S. and Mexico border states.California, Arizona, Baja California, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, New Mexico, Sonora, Tamaulipas and Texas make up the 10 Border States that participate in the Border Governors Conference. Muchas felicidades, Raul!

Read the entire news release from the State of California here and a bio of Raul here.

We are keeping tabs on an interesting and quite vigorous debate on Canadian environmental policy that’s raging north of the border at the Calgary Stampede in oil-rich Alberta. Liberal leader Stéphane Dion’s “Green Shift” plan calls for raising taxes on activities that produce high carbon emissions coupled with broad-based tax cuts for individuals affected by the resulting rise in prices. The CBC reports that:

Dressed in a Stetson and a checkered cowboy shirt, Harper told a crowd of Conservative party faithful Sunday night at a Calgary Stampede barbecue that Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion's plan to shift taxes toward carbon-emitting industries and away from individuals would devastate the Canadian economy.