They are not a figment of his imagination. There's a report available on the website of Western Economic Diversification Canada.
Free Trade Zone Study
Of course this report doesn't list any of the negative impacts, of which Petros has already named a few.
It also doesn't list some of the options that were considered.
As people may or many not know, Native Americans are free to cross the border any time, in both directions.
They also have reserves on both sides of the borders, generally poor, and the natives tend to have a mental attitude about taxes and how regulated economics are supposed to not work that harmonizes nicely with that of the non-taxed no-national-allegiance new-world-orderers.
It made sense in a lot of ways. Set up non-taxed sweat shops on native reserves, pay them substandard wages which they won't care about because they don't have to pay rent or taxes anyway because they're living on reserve, use the reserves as ports to ship stuff from one country to another without duty, etc. etc...
The problem was, it was eventually concluded that the natives could not be trusted to abide by certain inherent rules with respect to how merchandise was to move on and off the reserves, and between reserves.
Ironic, isn't it? The grand deconstructors of a government's right to regulate its own economy got bit by people who would deconstruct the regulation-deconstructor's regulations.
And thus we got the current FTZ system now being quietly built before anyone notices, with plans on the drawing board for $10 billion of new prisons to deal with the reaction when people figure out what those FTZs mean in the big picture.