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One of the annoying creations of the NAFTA trade pact is the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC), a $9-million operation based on Montreal. Funded by the three North American governments, the CEC serves no known purpose except to periodically produce globules of green propaganda in which the worst of conventional environmental misinformation gets trotted out as official dogma. Yesterday, the CEC issued The North American Mosaic: A State of the Environment Report, possibly the worst CEC production in its five years of existence.

Thanks to some clever post-New Year media release tricks, including nation-wide organized leaks, the report received splashy advance coverage across the country yesterday. Wildlife in Crisis, NAFTA Study Says. Vast Floods, 235 Species in Peril. These and other disasters supposedly loom as populations, trade and growth expand. The CEC, the product of a free trade agreement, more or less declares that free trade and globalization are agents of human destruction of nature: "Global trade can also lead to global access to resources, and this can place pressures on ecosystems."

Described as NAFTA's environmental watchdog, the commission is actually a lapdog of green activism. Just about every myth and junk science fantasy gets a mention in the report, along with every article in the catechism of sustainable development and the emerging planning scam, ecosystem management.