North America's leaders gather at a Canadian resort to promote integrated trade and security on Monday, a plan protesters outside the meeting say tramples on the rights of ordinary citizens.
US President George W. Bush will also review the credit crunch and global market turmoil with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexican President Felipe Calderon at the two-day summit in Montebello, Quebec. They are meeting as partners in the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, to develop what they have called a Security and Prosperity Partnership, or SPP.
That was drafted in 2005 after the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001 to try to ensure that North America is a safe place to live and do business. The seemingly innocuous move has upset activists on the left and the right who are concerned about a loss of national sovereignty.
Fences 3 metres (10 feet) high were erected around the hotel grounds to keep away anti-capitalist protesters expected to descend on Montebello, about 70 km (40 miles) east of Ottawa.
Convoys of school buses from Montreal and Ottawa were expected to bring some 2,000 protesters to the site shortly before the meetings begin. The SPP's critics say the talks are being carried out behind the backs of ordinary citizens and without any votes planned in the Canadian Parliament or US Congress, yet in close consultation with corporate leaders.
"This summit represents the kinds of policies and politics that mean the entrenchment of poverty and control of people's movements," said Mandeep Dhillon of People's Global Action of Montreal.
Christopher Sands, an expert on Canada at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the meeting was unlikely to produce major strides but would show that the United States was tending regional ties.
"The summit is a symbolic manifestation of the fact that Bush, the United States, is in fact paying attention to its neighbours and working on an agenda of mutual concern," he said. Bush will have separate one-on-one meetings with Harper and Calderon on Monday.
Canadian officials said they were likely to discuss Russia's symbolic laying of claim to the North Pole, where it placed a flag on the seabed, as well as the war in Afghanistan, where Canada has committed 2,500 troops through February 2009.
The head of Canada's opposition, Liberal leader Stephane Dion, says Harper should demand that Nato start finding a replacement for Canadian troops.
Bush and Harper were also expected to discuss the Middle East, Iran, climate change and the Doha trade negotiations. Opposition politicians accuse Canada's Conservative prime minister of being a Bush protege but Harper's spokesman, Dimitri Soudas, said Liberal Paul Martin was in power when the SPP was set up. For Bush and Calderon, it will be their first face-to-face meeting since US immigration overhaul legislation collapsed in Congress and dealt a blow to a key issue for US-Mexico relations.
The Bush administration said this month it would increase scrutiny and impose heftier fines on US businesses that employ illegal immigrants. The United States also will expand the visa term for professional workers from Mexico and Canada to three years from one year.
Calderon is monitoring Hurricane Dean, which was headed toward Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, and a diplomatic source said no decision had been made yet on whether he would leave the meeting early to go to the storm region. "There is no reason to rush it," the source said.