The IRPP is pleased to publish Mapping the New North American Reality as a Working Paper series in the context of its Canada's Options in North America research program.
The papers in this series were written by participants in a project sponsored by the PanAmerican Partnership for Business Education, an alliance of four North American business schools. In cooperation with HEC-Montreal and the IRPP, the Partnership hosted a Study Group on "Mapping the New North American Reality" in November 2003. To gain a better understanding of what this new reality entails, we invited 30 Canadian, Mexican and US colleagues to explore the nature of North American economic integration.
The goal of the project was to open a new dialogue, centered on the disjuncture between the facts on the ground - pointing to the deepening of interdependence in such crucial areas as energy, security, health and safety, and job creation - and the near-absence of a public consciousness of shared "North American" interests. We challenged the group to "think North America," and, by extension, to "talk North America" by mapping out how integration was actually taking place in diverse sectors, issue areas, and geographical regions.