UTC The  ratification of The Great Lakes Commission finally commits American and Canadian governments to the geographical definition of the North American Great Lakes as a distinctive political entity  In fact and operation the complex cooperative management of The Great Lakes for purposes of trade border discipline parks transportation hydropower water management and environmental protection has been a reality since    Ethnically and economically the borders have always been porous   Politically the region has more binational commonalities than generally supposed    Much of Ontarian political culture derived from both AngloAmerican heritage and the simultaneous influence and threat of American examples   More importantly both the American and Canadian sides played analogous roles in the worldeconomy   Both sides of the border transformed from peripheries that supplied natural resources to semiperipheries that performed middleman brokerage functions to core regions represented by such world cities as Chicago and Toronto that provided hubs of capital administration and management   History politics culture and ethnic composition as well as the more obvious economy technology and geology define Ontario and American Great Lakes states as one region    January