President Vicente Fox
—Up Close and Personal
By Paul Jackson
December 2005 Guadalajara-Lakeside Volume 22, Number 4

     President Vicente Fox saunters into the room, takes a seat with ease and shakes hands with a genuine welcoming smile, which creates an immediate liking for him. He surely is an affable and congenial individual, and even standing 6' 5" and another three inches added when he wears his trademark cowboy boots, he’s friendly rather than imposing.
     That, I’m told, didn’t come from his years as president of Coca Cola Mexico, (a position legend has he attained after starting out as a lowly driver for the soft drink company), but was built into his personality early on by his adoring mother, Mercedes Quesada.
     It had been more than four years since I last met Fox in Mexico City, but now he was on a visit to Calgary, the booming oil capital of Canada, in the province of Alberta. My chat with Fox was neatly put together by a good friend, Maria Teresa Garcia de Madero, the Mexican ambassador to Canada. Garcia cuts an enchanting figure in diplomatic circles in Ottawa, Canada’s capital city, and on her visits across Canada. A true ambassador for her country.
     Fox had two main messages in his chat with me.
     One was his vision, outlined at the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City three years ago, that North America (the United States, Canada and Mexico) should start moving towards integration on the model of the European Union.
     This, a controversial concept to many, would eventually mean the dismantling of all barriers to the movement of goods and people between the three nations.
The Mexican president sometimes dubs this concept NAFTA PLUS after the enormously successful North American Free Trade Agreement between the three nations.
     The other vision is that energy should be brought under the free trade pact, and foreign investment should be welcomed into Mexico to help develop its energy sector. Considering the state owned oil industry monopoly in Mexico is akin to a motherhood issue, this idea is a political hot potato.
     But events may well push even the most nationalistic Mexican to recognize that the situation must change. For since the ubiquitous Pemex (Petroleos Mexicanos) pays out more than 60% of its annual revenue to the government in taxes and royalties. Mexico now lacks the resources to fully explore for new reserves and develop its industry in a world in which change is rapid.
     Aside from the dramatic rise in oil prices in recent months, and the growing demand for oil from booming economies such as China, Mexico relies on imports of natural gas from U.S. regions hit hard by hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and is now looking for new reserves and markets.
     While Fox specifically said he was encouraging Canadian oil companies to invest in Mexico’s energy sector, the thorny problem of allowing U.S. companies and those of other nations can hardly be overlooked.
     If energy is brought under NAFTA, and particularly if the three North American nations start converging into a European Union style entity, discrimination against foreign investment would have to be significantly eased.
     Surprisingly, of the $20 billion (U.S.) now invested every year in the Mexican energy industry, some two thirds of it is private capital. So the sector isn’t as tightly state controlled as it sometimes appears.
     That said, despite the jealously over safeguarding its own oil industry, in the 25-nation European Union, (which Fox wants to emulate) in which residents carry the same passports and even regulatory agencies, and civil and criminal laws have become increasingly uniform, the individual nations have been allowed to safeguard their own traditions and protect their priorities.
     Some rules can be bent, and exemptions can be made.
     Speaking of our own three nations, Fox told me all North Americans have to make the best and most efficient use of our energy and keep this region of the world and NAFTA competitive.
     “We must be strong producers and developers of energy. We have to protect our jobs in this region from other blocs in the world that are becoming more competitive.” He worries the U.S., Canada and Mexico are all losing jobs to China and other Asia countries, and so a mutual energy pact is a logical step.
     “To meet this competitive challenge and protect jobs, we must all work together.”
     Potential investors shouldn’t be overly worried; his attempts at reform have been blocked or stalled in the Mexican Congress by representatives of the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI) which his National Action Party (PAN) ousted from its seven-decade-long in 2000.
     He is confident constitutional and legal changes will occur in the future, and with those changes the doors will open for more investment. Companies that start making moves now will find it a plus when changes are made.
     “To those who are hesitant right now, to those who have fears, I ask them to please come to Mexico and see how things are happening.”
     Fox’s vision of a European-style union of our three nations may initially seem grandiose, but recall the European Union actually stemmed from a simple steel and coal trade agreement in the early 1950s, and started off with just six members, yet is now not only an integrated entity of 25 nations, but is backed solidly by Conservative, Liberal and Socialist politicians, and even labour unions.
     As an aside, and I didn’t get a chance to mention this to Fox himself, it dawned on me as I was leaving our meeting that he has a similar ethnic heritage to that of the Editor-in-Chief of El Ojo del Lago, in that the Mexican president’s mother is Mexican, while his grandfather came from Ireland and settled in Mexico.
     It’s a rather rare combination, and in my experience those who possess it have a distinctive charm, combining as they do the wit of the Irish with the flair of the Mexican.
     paul.jackson@calgarysun.com