The new binational regionalism

Everybody knows these days that one of Seattle’s advantages in the recession is the relative health of the Northwest economy as a whole. Boeing and Microsoft pull in dollars from both coasts and from overseas, but it is also nice to have a regional market that is still strong enough to want our products close to home.

But what “everybody knows” seldom embraces the realization that part of our regional market–and a part with some of the most potential–includes British Columbia and Alberta. The neighboring provinces, like us, will probably weather the international downturn better than the rest of their own country. Like us, they no longer are tied to resource industries, having become customers, sources, and competitors of ours in such fields as biotechnology and computer software (the latter stimulated by the influx of Hong Kong Chinese). Their market is as big as Washington state’s. And it begins only a short drive up I-5.

Canadians, on balance, probably are more alert to this regional market than we are. Since the US-Canada Free Trade Agreement took effect, for example, provincially sponsored programs to familiarize new and smaller companies in British Columbia with the exotic business conditions of Washington State have become far more thorough than any thought up for traveling salespersons here who might be looking north.

A notable exception to Yankee complacency is the Seattle Mariners, who have under way a major ticket push in British Columbia, An older example of regional prospecting is the membership drive of Seattle’s public-television station, KCTS, which has discovered a large and grateful audience in Victoria and Vancouver.

In Vancouver last week, a conference of Americans and Canadians found that, in any event, political and business leaders on both sides of the border need to be more energetic in developing the binational regionalism that is everyone’s ticket to a more successful economy. Highlighting the conference of the Pacific Corridor Enterprise Council, a new alliance of small and medium businesses, were joint appearances by the mayors of Seattle (Norm Rice), Portland (Bud Clark), and Vancouver, BC (Gordon Campbell). This was a happy mixture, for the three cities have problems in common and even have similar personality traits. (When the departing Rice was handed a souvenir in the form of an official Vancouver umbrella, one could imagine him asking himself, “Hey, why didn’t we think of that?”)

The business sessions examined comparative tax systems and ways to combat both physical and psychological barriers. The exchange of ideas among the two Hizzoners and the one His Worship mostly had to do with outlining items for a mutual agenda rather than expatiating upon them.

The high-speed rail link that Seattle Port Commissioner Paul Schell, among others, has been promoting this past year won general acclaim, as did a rotating regional arts festival, but there was little indication of just what the next steps are or who needs to take them. (In fairness, most of the answers must come from quarters other than city halls.)

Perhaps the most important political outcome of the conference was the heartfelt expression that the changing world economy must include a special role for international subregions. Enthusiasm for the US-Canada trade pact already is being overtaken by speculation about a possible agreement between the United States and Mexico that would effectively create a North American Common Market. It’s a wonderful concept, but who has thought it through? Canadians, it would appear, are hardly even being asked about it.

A Fraser Institute (Vancouver) and Hudson Institute (Indianapolis) team is currently doing some independent thinking on the subject and making analytical comparisons with the experiences of the European Community. The new North American Institute in Santa Fe has had meetings of business-people and academics in all three countries to assess how a North American market might behave as a unit (in response, for example, to the Japanese). The Inter-American Dialogue, sponsored by the Aspen Institute, has been organized to look even further ahead–to a Western Hemisphere Common Market, perhaps our best chance for long-range prosperity and stability in Latin America.

But missing so far from the studies, including the fragmentary planning of national governments, is a look at the opportunities posed by international subregions such as ours: northwest Mexico and the American Southwest, Miami and the Caribbean, Ontario and the northern Midwest. People surely will find more appeal in a common market for the continent if they can identify with it at a closer range.

Of all the regions poised to promote cross-border cooperation, the Pacific Northwest is probably the best situated and even the best organized. A Pacific Northwest Leadership Council made up of legislators from the United States and Canada–propelled by King County’s determined state Senator, Alan Bluechel, and staffed in part by the Northwest Policy Center at the University of Washington–is investigating ways to bridge our legal systems. For the past dozen years or so, Western Washington University in Bellingham has been developing a well-regarded academic center for US-Canada relations. The Pacific Northwest Economic Partnership represents a commitment by the governors of Washington and Oregon and the premier of British Columbia to work together on international trade shows and other forms of economic promotion.

In most of the popular media, nearby Canada is still about as familiar to Washingtonians as is South Carolina. Amusingly, the media on both sides of the border tended to cover the recent floods we had in common as if the flooding stopped at state or provincial boundaries. But a new quarterly publication, The New Pacific, is striving to meet the need for deeper analyses of cross-border issues. Implicit in this endeavor is a working faith in what the Northwest can become. Most nationality movements required a journal early on; shouldn’t a nascent regionalism require one as well?

“Cascadia,” or whatever it is called, requires such specific vision. Too often we have limited ourselves to periodic bursts of fulsome bonhomie when someone on one side of the border threw an international potlatch. The spirit has been, I’ll buy a ticket to your Expo if you’ll buy one to my Goodwill Games.

The new Northwest regionalism has to be more consistent, detailed, and committed. For political and economic leaders alike it requires imagination to see the long-term constituency that can be created on behalf of regionalism, and patience to keep at the job until the new constituency finds its voice.