The North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC) is an international environmental-agreement between the governments of Canada, Mexico, and the United States. NAFTA sought to promote economic growth by lowering most of the existing barriers to trade. While many advocates of NAFTA argued that it would indirectly increase the standard of living and thus environmental spending on the border, many critics commented on the fact that only a single sentence in the agreement's preamble addressed the environmental impacts of promoting free trade. In order to ensure that NAFTA would pass, the Clinton Administration pushed for NAAEC as a side agreement specifically to aid border environmental issues. From NAAEC came the creation of the Commission on Environmental Cooperation (CEC), an institution providing a forum for environmental-law enforcement disputes to be resolved. Scholars generally agree that the NAAEC's diction is ambiguous and does not clearly define the authority that the organization has; it is also unclear whether violators are obligated to respond to inquiries made by the CEC, and thus few parties have actually been investigated and punished for failing to cooperate.