Here is more on the Sask. Party and TILMA. It may be that the party is trying to outflank the NDP on the issue and prevent opposition to TILMA becomming an issue in the election that is due this year or early next year. The Sask. Party by the way can be seen as a substitute for the Conservative Party in Saskatchewan. The latter was so badly discredited that the conservatives have given up on it for now.
Stopping TILMA at the Fourth Meridian
Posted by Erin Weir under democracy, TILMA, unions.
June 29th, 2007
Comments: 3
Count me among those pleasantly surprised by the right-wing Saskatchewan Party’s rejection of TILMA, a complete reversal of its previous position. I think that labour’s extensive participation in the legislative-committee hearings helped to convince the Saskatchewan Party that (1.) there is significant opposition to signing TILMA and (2.) there are genuine problems with the agreement.
During the first week of hearings in Regina, Saskatchewan Party MLAs mainly seemed interested in dismissing criticism of TILMA. During the second week in Saskatoon, they seemed more interested in seriously considering the agreement’s pitfalls. We had a reasonably good sense that the governing NDP would oppose TILMA, but changing the Saskatchewan Party’s stance is a major accomplishment.
The Saskatchewan Party’s members of the Standing Committee on the Economy deserve some credit. However, the Saskatchewan Party’s main motive is to neutralize what could be a wedge issue between it and the NDP in the upcoming provincial election. Of course, the risk remains that a potential future Saskatchewan Party government would sign TILMA, possibly after pretending to renegotiate it. Its leader, Brad Wall, still seems to think that the agreement’s main problem was Saskatchewan’s absence from the initial negotiations. Clearly, the best way of keeping Saskatchewan out of TILMA would be to re-elect the NDP.
Yesterday, the Standing Committee on the Economy released its report, which is essentially a synopsis of the hearings. My submission to the Committee is available here. A collection of documents on TILMA, many of which the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour submitted, is available here.
PS - The Fourth Meridian is the Alberta-Saskatchewan border.
Showing posts with label Criticism of TILMA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Criticism of TILMA. Show all posts
Monday, July 2, 2007
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Trade Lawyer criticizes TILMA
The entire Leader-Post article is here. The Sask. Chambers of Commerce on the other hand were enthusiastic about TILMA and want to get on with it. The article presents the pro TILMA arguments as well.
Ottawa-based trade lawyer Steven Shrybman, who was hired by CUPE Saskatchewan to analyse the agreement, said TILMA favours private holdings over public interests.
In his condemnation of the agreement, Shrybman said TILMA sets the stage for deregulation and privatization. The enforcement clause would also create a system where businesses in other provinces could invoke a review process whenever they felt their interests weren't met, he said.
"If you took out the enforcement aspect, no one would be interested in TILMA," he said.
The lawyer said TILMA would open the door for private health care in Saskatchewan. Other public interests would also be jeopardized by the agreement, he said.
While TILMA contains provisions that would protect labour groups, CUPE Saskatchewan president Tom Graham said inclusion in the deal could have a negative effect for all Saskatchewan residents.
"We are citizens of the province as well as working people," Graham said. "It concerns us that a business or an individual could decide how we're going to live."
The standing committee's report to the province is expected on June 29.
© The Leader-Post (Regina) 2007
Ottawa-based trade lawyer Steven Shrybman, who was hired by CUPE Saskatchewan to analyse the agreement, said TILMA favours private holdings over public interests.
In his condemnation of the agreement, Shrybman said TILMA sets the stage for deregulation and privatization. The enforcement clause would also create a system where businesses in other provinces could invoke a review process whenever they felt their interests weren't met, he said.
"If you took out the enforcement aspect, no one would be interested in TILMA," he said.
The lawyer said TILMA would open the door for private health care in Saskatchewan. Other public interests would also be jeopardized by the agreement, he said.
While TILMA contains provisions that would protect labour groups, CUPE Saskatchewan president Tom Graham said inclusion in the deal could have a negative effect for all Saskatchewan residents.
"We are citizens of the province as well as working people," Graham said. "It concerns us that a business or an individual could decide how we're going to live."
The standing committee's report to the province is expected on June 29.
© The Leader-Post (Regina) 2007
Monday, June 11, 2007
The plan to disappear Canada
This is a good summary of some of the things that are happening to integrate Canada and the US )and Mexico. It is ironic that is often the right that is opposing the move in the US while it is the left here. Dobbin talks about deregulation but much of this is less deregulation than harmonisation of regulations to the detriment of national control and often resulting in weaker regulations as the pesiticide residues case shows. This is from Rabble.
The plan to disappear Canada
>by Murray Dobbin
June 11, 2007
If the machinations going on in this country regarding so-called “deep integration” were instead a communist conspiracy to take over the country (you will, of course, have to try hard to imagine this) the news media would be blaring the story.
Pundits would pontificate, editorialists would erupt, security forces would be unleashed.
Instead, a virtual conspiracy to make the country disappear through assimilation into the U.S. gets barely a mention.
But news of the scheme — formally called the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) — is finally breaking out of the secret chambers of the ruling elite and the federal government. This is both good news and bad. It's good that ordinary citizens are finally getting a glimpse of the betrayal of their country. The news is bad because it reflects just how much of this scheme is already being implemented.
Given the meetings of CEOs and politicians to advance the scheme politically, as well as all that must go into its actual implementation, there is simply too much activity to keep secret.
Ten dots to connect
Here are 10 developments in the plan to disappear Canada.
1) Pesticides 'harmonized.' The most thoroughly reported story (though even this did not go much beyond the CanWest chain) was the revelation that Canada was about to “harmonize” its regulations, setting limits for pesticide residue on fruits and vegetables. In 40 per cent of the cases, the U.S. allows for higher levels. Richard Aucoin, chief registrar of the Pest Management Regulatory Agency, which sets Canada's pesticide levels, said that Canada's higher levels were a “trade irritant.”
The downgrading of health protection had been a NAFTA initiative, but is being “fast-tracked” as part of the Security and Prosperity Partnership. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Some 300 regulatory regimes are currently going through the same process.
2) Tory tirade. The next story that broke through the wall of media silence reported on the paranoid reaction of the Harper Conservatives to any criticism of the SPP. The occasion was hearings of the Commons International Trade Committee into the SPP, forced by the NDP.
Gordon Laxer, head of Alberta's Parkland Institute, was testifying on the energy implications of the SPP, warning that eastern Canada could end up “freezing in the dark.” He had barely started when the chair of the committee, Conservative MP Leon Benoit, demanded that Laxer halt his “irrelevant” testimony. The Committee members overruled Benoit — who promptly (and illegally) adjourned the meeting and stomped out. The NDP and Liberal members nonetheless continued without him.
3) Council of corporate power. The SPP initiative began in earnest back in 2002 with the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (formerly the BCNI), the most powerful corporate body in the country. It continues its leadership role, but does not promote the scheme just in its own name. It instead has helped create several supportive bodies that now help drive the agenda. Included in these are the North American Competitive Council (NACC), which includes CEOs of the largest North American corporations, and which institutionalizes the exclusively corporate nature of the agreement. The NACC is the only advisory group to the three NAFTA/SPP governments.
4) Secretive summit. The NACC at least is public. But much of what happens in building the elite consensus for deep integration is done in absolute secrecy or very privately, away from the prying eyes of the media. The most secretive of these was held last year from Sept. 12 to 14, in Banff Springs. As The Tyee reported, the gathering was sponsored by something called the North American Forum* and it was attended by some of the most powerful members of the North American ruling elite.
Attendees, according to a leaked list that could not be confirmed, included Donald Rumsfeld, George Schultz (former U.S. Secretary of State), General Rick Hillier, Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor and Minister of Public Safety Stockwell Day. The media was not informed of the meeting and it was first revealed by the weekly Banff Crag & Canyon.
Stockwell Day refused to even confirm he was there, but said that even if he was, it was a “private” meeting that he would not comment on. There is no better indication that these meetings, and the SPP itself, constitute a parallel governing structure — unaccountable to any democratic institution or the public.
5) 'No fly' coordination. Canada will have its own “no-fly” list just like our U.S. “partner.”
As the Council of Canadians pointed out: “The no-fly list is very much a Security and Prosperity Partnership initiative. 'The SPP Report to Leaders, August 2006' outlines 105 SPP initiatives. Initiative #93 states, 'Develop, test, evaluate and implement a plan to establish comparable aviation passenger screening, and the screening of baggage and air cargo (for North America).'”
Canada's privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart has raised a number of concerns about the plan including the fact that the list will be shared with the U.S., that “false positives” are a virtual certainty, and that there is no evidence put forward by the government that the list will improve airline security.
6) Bye, bye Canadian dollar? David Dodge, the head of the Bank of Canada, told a Chicago audience that a single currency for North America “is possible.” That would see a big chunk of Canadian sovereignty and the ability to guide the economy through monetary policy go out the window. It's not the first time Dodge has mused about abandoning the Canadian dollar — or deep integration.
7) Water and oil giveaways. The deep integrationists clearly see Canadian water as a North American resource, not a Canadian resource. At yet another very private meeting, held in Calgary on April 27th under the auspices of yet another forum, it was made clear that water is on the table for negotiation.
Discussion of bulk “water transfers” and diversions took place at a Calgary meeting of the North American Future 2025 Project (partly funded by the U.S. government). The meeting based its deliberations on the false notion that Canada has 20 per cent of the world's fresh water. Actual available supply amounts to only around six per cent — about the same as has the U.S.
The water (and environment) meeting was preceded by another on April 26th talking about “North American” energy. The beneficiary of these discussions is pretty clear when you realize Canada has no national energy policy. We are the only energy exporting country in the world without a one.
Gordon Laxer told the Parliamentary committee: “The National Energy Board wrote me on April 12: 'Unfortunately, the NEB has not undertaken any studies on security of supply.'” He was also told by the NEB that Canada does not maintain a 90 day energy reserve as other developed nations do. As Laxer points out, “Canada may be a net exporter, but it still imports 40 per cent of its oil — 850,000 barrels per day — to meet 90 per cent of Atlantic Canada's and Quebec's needs, and 40 per cent of Ontario's.”
Canada exports 63 per cent of its oil production and 56 per cent of its natural gas, percentages that can never decrease under NAFTA.
8) NAFTA Superhighway. State governments in the U.S. are becoming increasingly alarmed at the prospects of deep integration. Earlier this year, Idaho became the first state to pass a legislative resolution directing the U.S. Congress to drop out of the SPP, which is referred to as the North American Union amongst U.S. opponents. Thirteen states in addition to Idaho are calling on Congress to abandon the SPP: Georgia, Arizona, Missouri, Illinois, Oregon, Montana, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Utah, South Dakota, Tennessee, Washington and Virginia.
Part of the opposition is focused on plans for a so-called NAFTA Superhighway: actually a corridor several hundred metres wide including rail lines, freeways and pipelines from Mexico to the Canadian border. There is a growing grassroots movement against the SPP in the U.S., but led by the right over the issue of compromising American sovereignty.
9) Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA). While U.S. states, concerned about state rights under an unaccountable “North American Union, ” are organizing against the scheme, Canadian provinces are either blithely unaware or knowingly complicit in the deal. More Canadians may be aware of TILMA — the investors' rights agreement between B.C. and Alberta — than they are about the SPP, but in reality they are one and the same.
TILMA is major piece of the deep integration, deregulation imperative and fits hand in glove with the SPP. There is a similar, though more informal, process evolving in the Atlantic provinces, called “Atlantica.” And B.C. is now pushing the so-called Gateway Initiative, a kind of regional superhighway project that will see huge and environmentally disastrous expansion of ports, highways and pipelines to further supply the U.S.'s insatiable demand for resources and cheap Asian goods.
10) The next SPP summit. The third leaders summit on the SPP will take place this August 21-22nd in Montebello, Quebec, not far from Ottawa. By the time it does many more Canadians will be aware of it.
Part of the reason that news of the SPP/deep integration issue is finally seeing the light of day is that opposition is growing and groups fighting the SPP are having an impact. The Council of Canadians, the CLC and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives held an SPP teach-in in Ottawa last month and many civil society groups are now taking deep integration to their members. Demonstrations are planned for the summit. The NDP continues to press the government on SPP secrecy and the Green Party's Elizabeth May has said deep integration will be a focus of the party's election platform.
It is hard to think of any other issue in modern Canadian history, especially one that will literally determine whether the country survives or not, that has taken so long to get public attention. I first wrote about it September, 2002.
By the time the SPP summit has come and gone and the fall political season begins, deep integration, the most treacherous plan for the country yet devised by Bay Street, will be increasingly exposed.
And by the next election, we could see a repeat of the great “free trade” election of 1988. This time we have to win.
Murray Dobbin writes from Vancouver. This column has appeared in The Tyee.
The plan to disappear Canada
>by Murray Dobbin
June 11, 2007
If the machinations going on in this country regarding so-called “deep integration” were instead a communist conspiracy to take over the country (you will, of course, have to try hard to imagine this) the news media would be blaring the story.
Pundits would pontificate, editorialists would erupt, security forces would be unleashed.
Instead, a virtual conspiracy to make the country disappear through assimilation into the U.S. gets barely a mention.
But news of the scheme — formally called the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) — is finally breaking out of the secret chambers of the ruling elite and the federal government. This is both good news and bad. It's good that ordinary citizens are finally getting a glimpse of the betrayal of their country. The news is bad because it reflects just how much of this scheme is already being implemented.
Given the meetings of CEOs and politicians to advance the scheme politically, as well as all that must go into its actual implementation, there is simply too much activity to keep secret.
Ten dots to connect
Here are 10 developments in the plan to disappear Canada.
1) Pesticides 'harmonized.' The most thoroughly reported story (though even this did not go much beyond the CanWest chain) was the revelation that Canada was about to “harmonize” its regulations, setting limits for pesticide residue on fruits and vegetables. In 40 per cent of the cases, the U.S. allows for higher levels. Richard Aucoin, chief registrar of the Pest Management Regulatory Agency, which sets Canada's pesticide levels, said that Canada's higher levels were a “trade irritant.”
The downgrading of health protection had been a NAFTA initiative, but is being “fast-tracked” as part of the Security and Prosperity Partnership. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Some 300 regulatory regimes are currently going through the same process.
2) Tory tirade. The next story that broke through the wall of media silence reported on the paranoid reaction of the Harper Conservatives to any criticism of the SPP. The occasion was hearings of the Commons International Trade Committee into the SPP, forced by the NDP.
Gordon Laxer, head of Alberta's Parkland Institute, was testifying on the energy implications of the SPP, warning that eastern Canada could end up “freezing in the dark.” He had barely started when the chair of the committee, Conservative MP Leon Benoit, demanded that Laxer halt his “irrelevant” testimony. The Committee members overruled Benoit — who promptly (and illegally) adjourned the meeting and stomped out. The NDP and Liberal members nonetheless continued without him.
3) Council of corporate power. The SPP initiative began in earnest back in 2002 with the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (formerly the BCNI), the most powerful corporate body in the country. It continues its leadership role, but does not promote the scheme just in its own name. It instead has helped create several supportive bodies that now help drive the agenda. Included in these are the North American Competitive Council (NACC), which includes CEOs of the largest North American corporations, and which institutionalizes the exclusively corporate nature of the agreement. The NACC is the only advisory group to the three NAFTA/SPP governments.
4) Secretive summit. The NACC at least is public. But much of what happens in building the elite consensus for deep integration is done in absolute secrecy or very privately, away from the prying eyes of the media. The most secretive of these was held last year from Sept. 12 to 14, in Banff Springs. As The Tyee reported, the gathering was sponsored by something called the North American Forum* and it was attended by some of the most powerful members of the North American ruling elite.
Attendees, according to a leaked list that could not be confirmed, included Donald Rumsfeld, George Schultz (former U.S. Secretary of State), General Rick Hillier, Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor and Minister of Public Safety Stockwell Day. The media was not informed of the meeting and it was first revealed by the weekly Banff Crag & Canyon.
Stockwell Day refused to even confirm he was there, but said that even if he was, it was a “private” meeting that he would not comment on. There is no better indication that these meetings, and the SPP itself, constitute a parallel governing structure — unaccountable to any democratic institution or the public.
5) 'No fly' coordination. Canada will have its own “no-fly” list just like our U.S. “partner.”
As the Council of Canadians pointed out: “The no-fly list is very much a Security and Prosperity Partnership initiative. 'The SPP Report to Leaders, August 2006' outlines 105 SPP initiatives. Initiative #93 states, 'Develop, test, evaluate and implement a plan to establish comparable aviation passenger screening, and the screening of baggage and air cargo (for North America).'”
Canada's privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart has raised a number of concerns about the plan including the fact that the list will be shared with the U.S., that “false positives” are a virtual certainty, and that there is no evidence put forward by the government that the list will improve airline security.
6) Bye, bye Canadian dollar? David Dodge, the head of the Bank of Canada, told a Chicago audience that a single currency for North America “is possible.” That would see a big chunk of Canadian sovereignty and the ability to guide the economy through monetary policy go out the window. It's not the first time Dodge has mused about abandoning the Canadian dollar — or deep integration.
7) Water and oil giveaways. The deep integrationists clearly see Canadian water as a North American resource, not a Canadian resource. At yet another very private meeting, held in Calgary on April 27th under the auspices of yet another forum, it was made clear that water is on the table for negotiation.
Discussion of bulk “water transfers” and diversions took place at a Calgary meeting of the North American Future 2025 Project (partly funded by the U.S. government). The meeting based its deliberations on the false notion that Canada has 20 per cent of the world's fresh water. Actual available supply amounts to only around six per cent — about the same as has the U.S.
The water (and environment) meeting was preceded by another on April 26th talking about “North American” energy. The beneficiary of these discussions is pretty clear when you realize Canada has no national energy policy. We are the only energy exporting country in the world without a one.
Gordon Laxer told the Parliamentary committee: “The National Energy Board wrote me on April 12: 'Unfortunately, the NEB has not undertaken any studies on security of supply.'” He was also told by the NEB that Canada does not maintain a 90 day energy reserve as other developed nations do. As Laxer points out, “Canada may be a net exporter, but it still imports 40 per cent of its oil — 850,000 barrels per day — to meet 90 per cent of Atlantic Canada's and Quebec's needs, and 40 per cent of Ontario's.”
Canada exports 63 per cent of its oil production and 56 per cent of its natural gas, percentages that can never decrease under NAFTA.
8) NAFTA Superhighway. State governments in the U.S. are becoming increasingly alarmed at the prospects of deep integration. Earlier this year, Idaho became the first state to pass a legislative resolution directing the U.S. Congress to drop out of the SPP, which is referred to as the North American Union amongst U.S. opponents. Thirteen states in addition to Idaho are calling on Congress to abandon the SPP: Georgia, Arizona, Missouri, Illinois, Oregon, Montana, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Utah, South Dakota, Tennessee, Washington and Virginia.
Part of the opposition is focused on plans for a so-called NAFTA Superhighway: actually a corridor several hundred metres wide including rail lines, freeways and pipelines from Mexico to the Canadian border. There is a growing grassroots movement against the SPP in the U.S., but led by the right over the issue of compromising American sovereignty.
9) Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA). While U.S. states, concerned about state rights under an unaccountable “North American Union, ” are organizing against the scheme, Canadian provinces are either blithely unaware or knowingly complicit in the deal. More Canadians may be aware of TILMA — the investors' rights agreement between B.C. and Alberta — than they are about the SPP, but in reality they are one and the same.
TILMA is major piece of the deep integration, deregulation imperative and fits hand in glove with the SPP. There is a similar, though more informal, process evolving in the Atlantic provinces, called “Atlantica.” And B.C. is now pushing the so-called Gateway Initiative, a kind of regional superhighway project that will see huge and environmentally disastrous expansion of ports, highways and pipelines to further supply the U.S.'s insatiable demand for resources and cheap Asian goods.
10) The next SPP summit. The third leaders summit on the SPP will take place this August 21-22nd in Montebello, Quebec, not far from Ottawa. By the time it does many more Canadians will be aware of it.
Part of the reason that news of the SPP/deep integration issue is finally seeing the light of day is that opposition is growing and groups fighting the SPP are having an impact. The Council of Canadians, the CLC and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives held an SPP teach-in in Ottawa last month and many civil society groups are now taking deep integration to their members. Demonstrations are planned for the summit. The NDP continues to press the government on SPP secrecy and the Green Party's Elizabeth May has said deep integration will be a focus of the party's election platform.
It is hard to think of any other issue in modern Canadian history, especially one that will literally determine whether the country survives or not, that has taken so long to get public attention. I first wrote about it September, 2002.
By the time the SPP summit has come and gone and the fall political season begins, deep integration, the most treacherous plan for the country yet devised by Bay Street, will be increasingly exposed.
And by the next election, we could see a repeat of the great “free trade” election of 1988. This time we have to win.
Murray Dobbin writes from Vancouver. This column has appeared in The Tyee.
Thursday, June 7, 2007
TILMA submission to Sask. govt. Committee on the Economy
This is a submission by the economist Erin Weir showing some of the dangers of TILMA.
Submission to the Standing Committee on the Economy: TILMA’s Supposed Economic Benefits
Introduction
The Saskatchewan Legislative Assembly’s Standing Committee on the Economy is studying the possibility of joining the Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA), which came into force between Alberta and British Columbia on April 1, 2007. This agreement gives business sweeping powers to sue provincial governments, municipalities and school boards over a wide range of public policies, laws and regulations.
TILMA’s supporters acknowledge that “signing TILMA would reduce our sovereignty” through “reduced legislative independence”, but argue that the agreement’s economic benefits would outweigh these costs. However, since there are almost no trade barriers between Saskatchewan, Alberta and BC, the agreement would deliver virtually no economic gain. The Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) recommends that Saskatchewan not join TILMA and instead work with other provinces toward transparent, incremental solutions to any minor inter-provincial barriers that may exist.
In February 2007, the CLC and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives released a paper demonstrating that alleged inter-provincial barriers have almost no measurable economic effect. This paper revealed that the Conference Board’s projection of TILMA adding $4.8 billion to BC’s economy was based on shoddy methodology and arithmetic errors.
In April 2007, the Government of Saskatchewan released another Conference Board study, which estimates that TILMA would add $291 million to Saskatchewan’s economy, along with two independent reviews of this study. This submission examines the myth of inter-provincial barriers, TILMA’s promised economic benefits for Saskatchewan, the Conference Board’s methodology, and TILMA’s costs.
The Myth of Inter-provincial Barriers
Canadians share common legal and financial institutions and are free to live and work anywhere in the country. There are neither customs stations along provincial borders nor tariffs on inter-provincial trade. The federal government has constitutional jurisdiction over inter-provincial trade and the courts have consistently struck down provincial attempts to obstruct it.
What many commentators call “inter-provincial barriers” are, in fact, regulatory differences between provinces. According to the Conference Board’s Saskatchewan study, “the most cited existing trade impediment was lack of inter-provincial harmonization of government standards and regulation. Most commonly, this barrier takes the form of occupational certification requirements, registration fees and standards and different inter-provincial freight load and dimension requirements.”
Federalism is intended to allow different provincial governments to establish different regulations in response to different provincial conditions. For example, Saskatchewan has less than one-third of Alberta’s population, but thousands more kilometers of highway than Alberta. In maintaining its highway system, Saskatchewan might reasonably choose to regulate the “freight load and dimension” of heavy trucks more stringently than Alberta regulates them.
In fields where provincial governments wish to harmonize their regulations, they can do so by jointly adopting common standards. This process hardly requires a sweeping agreement like TILMA that purports to apply to all areas of the economy with a few exceptions. TILMA would achieve harmonization by defining regulatory differences as trade barriers and pushing provincial standards down to the lowest common denominator.
Whether or not regulatory differences among provinces are justified, there is no evidence that they impede inter-provincial trade. Relative to distance and market size, trade between provinces is as intense as trade within provinces. By contrast, provinces are twelve times more likely to trade goods and thirty times more likely to trade services with each other than with American states.
From 2000 through 2006, Saskatchewan’s exports increased by 28% to other countries and by 38% to other provinces. Saskatchewan’s imports increased by 18% from other countries and by 31% from other provinces. Despite the rising prices of commodities that Saskatchewan sells onto world markets, inter-provincial trade is growing faster than international trade. This fact contradicts the allegation that inter-provincial barriers are obstructing inter-provincial trade.
Research conducted for the Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada, chaired by Donald Macdonald, concluded that inter-provincial barriers cost no more than 0.05% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In 1985, the Macdonald Commission reported: “The direct costs of existing interprovincial trade barriers appear to be small . . . their quantitative effect on the level of economic activity in Canada is not sufficient to justify a call for major reform.” Since the Agreement on Internal Trade (AIT) has eliminated most of the barriers that existed at that time, whatever remains is certainly not sufficient to justify TILMA’s sweeping, legalistic approach.
A study conducted by the Canadian Manufacturers’ Association in 1991 concluded that inter-provincial barriers cost $6.5 billion - or 1% of national GDP at the time - including preferential procurement policies ($5 billion), agricultural-marketing boards ($1 billion), and local-production requirements for alcoholic beverages ($0.5 billion). However, this study omitted the benefits of these policies to local suppliers, farmers, and breweries. Taking account of such benefits revealed the net cost of these barriers to be no more than 0.05% of GDP.
Since 1991, local-production requirements for alcoholic beverages and some agricultural-marketing boards have been eliminated. In any case, TILMA exempts existing marketing boards. The AIT has liberalized most provincial procurement, but exempts Crown Corporations. Signing TILMA would prevent the Crowns from favouring Saskatchewan-based suppliers. According to the Conference Board: “Crown Corporations and [some] government organizations have a ‘Buy Local’ policy, which favours local companies and suppliers. This policy would not hold under TILMA, potentially disadvantaging small local firms.”
There are very few genuine inter-provincial barriers. Academic analysis suggests that removing all barriers among all provinces would increase GDP by less than 0.05%.
TILMA’s Promised Economic Benefits
The Conference Board projects that TILMA will add $291 million (at 1997 basic prices) and 4,400 jobs to Saskatchewan’s economy. These figures seem implausibly optimistic for three reasons.
First, $291 million (at 1997 basic prices) equals 0.92% of Saskatchewan’s GDP. In other words, the Conference Board is suggesting that a “free trade” agreement with two other provinces would produce gains twenty times greater than those previously estimated for complete “free trade” with all provinces. John Helliwell, a former President of the Canadian Economics Association, judges “the maximum gain to be a small fraction of the 0.92% of GDP estimated by the Conference Board.”
Second, TILMA would handicap Saskatchewan’s economic-development policies. Due to Alberta’s vast resource wealth, businesses located there enjoy lower tax rates and higher levels of public spending. Although Saskatchewan cannot match Alberta on this basis, it can currently use targeted incentives to compete in specific sectors. TILMA would not address the omnipresent subsidy created by Alberta’s overall tax rates and public spending, but would prohibit the more focused and affordable “business subsidies” provided by Saskatchewan.
According to Dr. Helliwell, “increases in mutual access will always tend to favour firms located in the richer province. This fundamental non-neutrality means that the playing field can never be level between Alberta and Saskatchewan firms. This may indeed be the most important fact affecting the evaluation of TILMA by Saskatchewan, even though it is not mentioned in the Conference Board report.” By aggravating this disadvantage, TILMA could slightly reduce Saskatchewan’s GDP rather than slightly increasing it.
Third, Saskatchewan imports substantially more from its prospective TILMA partners than it exports to them. Since no significant inter-provincial barriers exist, TILMA would not significantly increase trade flows. However, if TILMA fulfilled its objective of expanding these flows, it would increase Saskatchewan’s trade deficits.
The most recent figures dividing Saskatchewan’s inter-provincial exports and imports by province are for 2003. In that year, Saskatchewan’s international trade surplus offset most of its inter-provincial trade deficit, leaving a net deficit of only $43 million. If Saskatchewan had exported 10% more to Alberta and BC and imported 10% more from these two provinces, this deficit would have been $288 million.
Other things being equal, a larger trade deficit (or smaller trade surplus) implies a lower GDP and less employment. Larger trade flows might increase productivity, which might increase GDP. However, productivity does not create jobs: “since the gain in GDP is coming from productivity increases, the increase in GDP is not based on hiring more workers but on reducing the number of workers required to produce a given amount of GDP.” Even if TILMA were to increase GDP, it is completely unclear how it could create 4,400 jobs.
The Conference Board’s Methodology
Prior to its Saskatchewan report, the Conference Board had estimated that TILMA would increase BC’s GDP by 3.8%. The CLC’s critique of this document was endorsed by Patrick Grady, a former senior federal Finance official and eminently mainstream economist who describes the BC estimate as “not credible.” Dr. Helliwell independently drew the same conclusion regarding the Saskatchewan report: “there is no empirical support for the Conference Board estimates of GDP and employment changes.”
Eric Howe, the other independent reviewer, came to the opposite conclusion: “the Conference Board’s analysis has underestimated the economic benefits to Saskatchewan of signing TILMA.” One might be tempted to view the Conference Board’s projections as a reasonable compromise between the opposing perspectives of Dr. Helliwell and Dr. Howe. However, a detailed examination of the Conference Board’s work strongly supports Dr. Helliwell’s interpretation.
The Conference Board has displayed little confidence in its own numbers. It recently forecast that BC’s economy will grow at the same moderate pace (2.2% annually) as the national economy, which seems inconsistent with the expectation of a 3.8% boost from TILMA. The Conference Board offers no explanation of why “free trade” with Alberta would expand BC’s economy by 3.8% but “free trade” with both Alberta and BC would expand Saskatchewan’s economy by one-quarter of this percentage: 0.92%.
In fact, both quantitative projections were arbitrarily inferred from small qualitative surveys of business organizations and government agencies. The Conference Board reports that its Saskatchewan “survey was sent to a total of 118 persons: 17 representing the public sector and 111 from the private sector.” Unfortunately, 17 added to 111 does not equal 118. An appendix seems to indicate that there were, in fact, 17 public-sector and 101 private-sector entities.
The Conference Board then explains, “we received a total of 34 responses, 9 from the public sector and 23 from the private sector.” Unfortunately, 9 added to 23 does not equal 34. It subsequently reports receiving 31 complete responses: 9 from the public sector and 22 from the private sector. Perhaps it also received 3 incomplete responses from the private sector, for a grand total of 34 responses.
More than three-quarters of private-sector entities did not respond to the survey, which suggests that alleged inter-provincial barriers are not an important issue for Saskatchewan business. Larger national surveys confirm this point. In the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters’ 2005-2006 “Management Issues Survey”, the top five economic-policy priorities had each been identified by more than 30% of companies. By contrast, only 13% of companies identified “reduce barriers to trade and investment” as a priority. Since some of these companies presumably meant international barriers, the proportion concerned about inter-provincial barriers must have been very low.
Dr. Howe argues, “Some Saskatchewan businesses that have successfully sought protection from outside competition will not be pleased by the lowering of trade barriers, giving them an incentive to under report the gains from Saskatchewan signing TILMA.” If these unnamed barriers exist, most other businesses would have an analogous incentive to overstate the gains from signing TILMA. In fact, most of the private-sector organizations surveyed by the Conference Board were not individual businesses, but chambers of commerce and industry associations which tend to be strongly committed to deregulation. Clearly, the “self-serving biases” among respondents would generally favour TILMA.
The Conference Board used these survey results to “score” eleven industries in seven regions of Saskatchewan. As Dr. Helliwell notes, “Since there was no research or quantitative base for this translation, it has no empirical basis, and hence cannot be treated as evidence.” The Conference Board combines its regional/industrial scores into a province-wide score, which it then treats as a percentage of GDP.
Dr. Howe defends this approach as follows: “There are arbitrary elements to the quantitative analysis by the Conference Board just as there are arbitrary elements to any quantitative analysis.” Conventional approaches to projecting the benefits of “free trade” agreements are at least based on explicit, if arbitrary, models of how the economy works and how much trade barriers cost. By contrast, the Conference Board does not even pretend to estimate the cost of existing barriers. Dr. Howe’s position seems to be that, since some arbitrariness is inevitable, any amount of arbitrariness is acceptable.
However, even if one accepts the Conference Board’s basic approach, most of its projected benefits are based on industries that are exempt from TILMA or that barely engage in inter-provincial trade. TILMA’s exemptions in the areas of energy, mining, forestry and fishing throw into question the high positive scores assigned to “primary” industry outside Regina and Saskatoon as well as the consistently positive scores assigned to “utilities”. Factoring out these nonexistent benefits reduces the credibility of forecast spin-offs for industries that barely engage in inter-provincial trade.
Retail and wholesale trade serve local consumers rather than out-of-province markets. To the extent that commercial services can be traded, the Conference Board suggests that Saskatchewan suppliers will suffer due to “increased competition from the more mature commercial services sectors of Alberta and BC.” Nevertheless, it assigns strongly positive scores to the “wholesale and retail trade” and “commercial services” industries in all seven regions. Factoring out these industries along with “primary” industry and “utilities” reduces the Conference Board’s projected benefits by three-quarters in Regina and Saskatoon, and by half in other regions.
In summary, the Conference Board sent questionnaires to a significant number of business organizations and some government agencies, miscounted the relatively few responses it received, used these responses to generate high scores for industries that do not engage in inter-provincial trade or that are largely exempt from TILMA, and then treated the final score as a fraction of GDP. This procedure does not inspire confidence in the Conference Board’s estimates. Since Dr. Howe presents no additional evidence, one is left with Dr. Helliwell’s conclusion that the impact of TILMA on Saskatchewan’s GDP would certainly be small and might be negative.
TILMA’s Costs
Whether TILMA slightly increases or slightly reduces GDP, its most important effect would be to allow private interests to sue the provincial government, Crown corporations, municipal governments, and school boards for up to $5 million for each alleged violation. Rather than simply preventing measures that discriminate among provinces, TILMA purports to “eliminate barriers that restrict or impair trade, investment or labour mobility.” Almost everything governments do influences the market and could be challenged under the agreement.
TILMA’s extremely broad language will be interpreted and applied by commercial tribunals that meet behind closed doors. While such tribunals may be necessary in adjudicating international disputes, there is no good reason to empower them in place of Canadian courts in adjudicating internal disputes. At worst, these tribunals may interpret TILMA in ways that severely restrict public policy. At best, uncertainty about possible interpretations would have a chilling effect on policy-makers who fear being sued.
To quote Dr. Helliwell, “unrestricted private access to the dispute mechanisms, combined with a commitment to neutrality of treatment, would make almost any provincial or municipal programme subject to attack. This is no doubt part of the appeal of TILMA for some. However, using expensive legal procedures to advance particular private interests is surely not the best way of providing a non-instrusive and efficient network of trade-supporting public rules and institutions.”
Defenders of TILMA argue that its exceptions would shield important public policies from challenge. However, these exceptions protect a policy only if the government can prove that there is no conceivable alternative policy. In practice, it would be extremely difficult for government to prove this negative case and extremely easy for business to suggest possible policy alternatives.
TILMA’s dispute-settlement process is based on the North American Free Trade Agreement’s (NAFTA) Chapter 11. A recent review of this notorious chapter concluded, “there are ongoing challenges related to water exports, log export controls, public postal services, Canada’s agricultural supply management system, Canadian cultural policy, and other matters which were supposedly excluded from the NAFTA.” There is no reason to believe that TILMA’s exceptions will be any more effective.
Conclusion
TILMA’s tiny potential economic benefit pales in comparison to its significant economic, social and environmental costs. Fortunately, there are far better approaches to internal trade. A more sensible process would begin with Saskatchewan businesses compiling publicly-available lists of inter-provincial barriers. Citizens could respond by assessing the economic, social and environmental purposes of these alleged barriers.
The Government of Saskatchewan could then work with other provincial governments and/or the federal government to reform measures that entail economic costs, but do not serve important policy goals. Indeed, provincial governments have already established mutually recognized credentials in many skilled trades and are currently working to harmonize licensing by professional bodies to enhance labour mobility. The few remaining inter-provincial barriers are so small that any measurable benefit could be achieved only by addressing them on a multilateral basis among all provinces.
Submission to the Standing Committee on the Economy: TILMA’s Supposed Economic Benefits
Introduction
The Saskatchewan Legislative Assembly’s Standing Committee on the Economy is studying the possibility of joining the Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA), which came into force between Alberta and British Columbia on April 1, 2007. This agreement gives business sweeping powers to sue provincial governments, municipalities and school boards over a wide range of public policies, laws and regulations.
TILMA’s supporters acknowledge that “signing TILMA would reduce our sovereignty” through “reduced legislative independence”, but argue that the agreement’s economic benefits would outweigh these costs. However, since there are almost no trade barriers between Saskatchewan, Alberta and BC, the agreement would deliver virtually no economic gain. The Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) recommends that Saskatchewan not join TILMA and instead work with other provinces toward transparent, incremental solutions to any minor inter-provincial barriers that may exist.
In February 2007, the CLC and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives released a paper demonstrating that alleged inter-provincial barriers have almost no measurable economic effect. This paper revealed that the Conference Board’s projection of TILMA adding $4.8 billion to BC’s economy was based on shoddy methodology and arithmetic errors.
In April 2007, the Government of Saskatchewan released another Conference Board study, which estimates that TILMA would add $291 million to Saskatchewan’s economy, along with two independent reviews of this study. This submission examines the myth of inter-provincial barriers, TILMA’s promised economic benefits for Saskatchewan, the Conference Board’s methodology, and TILMA’s costs.
The Myth of Inter-provincial Barriers
Canadians share common legal and financial institutions and are free to live and work anywhere in the country. There are neither customs stations along provincial borders nor tariffs on inter-provincial trade. The federal government has constitutional jurisdiction over inter-provincial trade and the courts have consistently struck down provincial attempts to obstruct it.
What many commentators call “inter-provincial barriers” are, in fact, regulatory differences between provinces. According to the Conference Board’s Saskatchewan study, “the most cited existing trade impediment was lack of inter-provincial harmonization of government standards and regulation. Most commonly, this barrier takes the form of occupational certification requirements, registration fees and standards and different inter-provincial freight load and dimension requirements.”
Federalism is intended to allow different provincial governments to establish different regulations in response to different provincial conditions. For example, Saskatchewan has less than one-third of Alberta’s population, but thousands more kilometers of highway than Alberta. In maintaining its highway system, Saskatchewan might reasonably choose to regulate the “freight load and dimension” of heavy trucks more stringently than Alberta regulates them.
In fields where provincial governments wish to harmonize their regulations, they can do so by jointly adopting common standards. This process hardly requires a sweeping agreement like TILMA that purports to apply to all areas of the economy with a few exceptions. TILMA would achieve harmonization by defining regulatory differences as trade barriers and pushing provincial standards down to the lowest common denominator.
Whether or not regulatory differences among provinces are justified, there is no evidence that they impede inter-provincial trade. Relative to distance and market size, trade between provinces is as intense as trade within provinces. By contrast, provinces are twelve times more likely to trade goods and thirty times more likely to trade services with each other than with American states.
From 2000 through 2006, Saskatchewan’s exports increased by 28% to other countries and by 38% to other provinces. Saskatchewan’s imports increased by 18% from other countries and by 31% from other provinces. Despite the rising prices of commodities that Saskatchewan sells onto world markets, inter-provincial trade is growing faster than international trade. This fact contradicts the allegation that inter-provincial barriers are obstructing inter-provincial trade.
Research conducted for the Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada, chaired by Donald Macdonald, concluded that inter-provincial barriers cost no more than 0.05% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In 1985, the Macdonald Commission reported: “The direct costs of existing interprovincial trade barriers appear to be small . . . their quantitative effect on the level of economic activity in Canada is not sufficient to justify a call for major reform.” Since the Agreement on Internal Trade (AIT) has eliminated most of the barriers that existed at that time, whatever remains is certainly not sufficient to justify TILMA’s sweeping, legalistic approach.
A study conducted by the Canadian Manufacturers’ Association in 1991 concluded that inter-provincial barriers cost $6.5 billion - or 1% of national GDP at the time - including preferential procurement policies ($5 billion), agricultural-marketing boards ($1 billion), and local-production requirements for alcoholic beverages ($0.5 billion). However, this study omitted the benefits of these policies to local suppliers, farmers, and breweries. Taking account of such benefits revealed the net cost of these barriers to be no more than 0.05% of GDP.
Since 1991, local-production requirements for alcoholic beverages and some agricultural-marketing boards have been eliminated. In any case, TILMA exempts existing marketing boards. The AIT has liberalized most provincial procurement, but exempts Crown Corporations. Signing TILMA would prevent the Crowns from favouring Saskatchewan-based suppliers. According to the Conference Board: “Crown Corporations and [some] government organizations have a ‘Buy Local’ policy, which favours local companies and suppliers. This policy would not hold under TILMA, potentially disadvantaging small local firms.”
There are very few genuine inter-provincial barriers. Academic analysis suggests that removing all barriers among all provinces would increase GDP by less than 0.05%.
TILMA’s Promised Economic Benefits
The Conference Board projects that TILMA will add $291 million (at 1997 basic prices) and 4,400 jobs to Saskatchewan’s economy. These figures seem implausibly optimistic for three reasons.
First, $291 million (at 1997 basic prices) equals 0.92% of Saskatchewan’s GDP. In other words, the Conference Board is suggesting that a “free trade” agreement with two other provinces would produce gains twenty times greater than those previously estimated for complete “free trade” with all provinces. John Helliwell, a former President of the Canadian Economics Association, judges “the maximum gain to be a small fraction of the 0.92% of GDP estimated by the Conference Board.”
Second, TILMA would handicap Saskatchewan’s economic-development policies. Due to Alberta’s vast resource wealth, businesses located there enjoy lower tax rates and higher levels of public spending. Although Saskatchewan cannot match Alberta on this basis, it can currently use targeted incentives to compete in specific sectors. TILMA would not address the omnipresent subsidy created by Alberta’s overall tax rates and public spending, but would prohibit the more focused and affordable “business subsidies” provided by Saskatchewan.
According to Dr. Helliwell, “increases in mutual access will always tend to favour firms located in the richer province. This fundamental non-neutrality means that the playing field can never be level between Alberta and Saskatchewan firms. This may indeed be the most important fact affecting the evaluation of TILMA by Saskatchewan, even though it is not mentioned in the Conference Board report.” By aggravating this disadvantage, TILMA could slightly reduce Saskatchewan’s GDP rather than slightly increasing it.
Third, Saskatchewan imports substantially more from its prospective TILMA partners than it exports to them. Since no significant inter-provincial barriers exist, TILMA would not significantly increase trade flows. However, if TILMA fulfilled its objective of expanding these flows, it would increase Saskatchewan’s trade deficits.
The most recent figures dividing Saskatchewan’s inter-provincial exports and imports by province are for 2003. In that year, Saskatchewan’s international trade surplus offset most of its inter-provincial trade deficit, leaving a net deficit of only $43 million. If Saskatchewan had exported 10% more to Alberta and BC and imported 10% more from these two provinces, this deficit would have been $288 million.
Other things being equal, a larger trade deficit (or smaller trade surplus) implies a lower GDP and less employment. Larger trade flows might increase productivity, which might increase GDP. However, productivity does not create jobs: “since the gain in GDP is coming from productivity increases, the increase in GDP is not based on hiring more workers but on reducing the number of workers required to produce a given amount of GDP.” Even if TILMA were to increase GDP, it is completely unclear how it could create 4,400 jobs.
The Conference Board’s Methodology
Prior to its Saskatchewan report, the Conference Board had estimated that TILMA would increase BC’s GDP by 3.8%. The CLC’s critique of this document was endorsed by Patrick Grady, a former senior federal Finance official and eminently mainstream economist who describes the BC estimate as “not credible.” Dr. Helliwell independently drew the same conclusion regarding the Saskatchewan report: “there is no empirical support for the Conference Board estimates of GDP and employment changes.”
Eric Howe, the other independent reviewer, came to the opposite conclusion: “the Conference Board’s analysis has underestimated the economic benefits to Saskatchewan of signing TILMA.” One might be tempted to view the Conference Board’s projections as a reasonable compromise between the opposing perspectives of Dr. Helliwell and Dr. Howe. However, a detailed examination of the Conference Board’s work strongly supports Dr. Helliwell’s interpretation.
The Conference Board has displayed little confidence in its own numbers. It recently forecast that BC’s economy will grow at the same moderate pace (2.2% annually) as the national economy, which seems inconsistent with the expectation of a 3.8% boost from TILMA. The Conference Board offers no explanation of why “free trade” with Alberta would expand BC’s economy by 3.8% but “free trade” with both Alberta and BC would expand Saskatchewan’s economy by one-quarter of this percentage: 0.92%.
In fact, both quantitative projections were arbitrarily inferred from small qualitative surveys of business organizations and government agencies. The Conference Board reports that its Saskatchewan “survey was sent to a total of 118 persons: 17 representing the public sector and 111 from the private sector.” Unfortunately, 17 added to 111 does not equal 118. An appendix seems to indicate that there were, in fact, 17 public-sector and 101 private-sector entities.
The Conference Board then explains, “we received a total of 34 responses, 9 from the public sector and 23 from the private sector.” Unfortunately, 9 added to 23 does not equal 34. It subsequently reports receiving 31 complete responses: 9 from the public sector and 22 from the private sector. Perhaps it also received 3 incomplete responses from the private sector, for a grand total of 34 responses.
More than three-quarters of private-sector entities did not respond to the survey, which suggests that alleged inter-provincial barriers are not an important issue for Saskatchewan business. Larger national surveys confirm this point. In the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters’ 2005-2006 “Management Issues Survey”, the top five economic-policy priorities had each been identified by more than 30% of companies. By contrast, only 13% of companies identified “reduce barriers to trade and investment” as a priority. Since some of these companies presumably meant international barriers, the proportion concerned about inter-provincial barriers must have been very low.
Dr. Howe argues, “Some Saskatchewan businesses that have successfully sought protection from outside competition will not be pleased by the lowering of trade barriers, giving them an incentive to under report the gains from Saskatchewan signing TILMA.” If these unnamed barriers exist, most other businesses would have an analogous incentive to overstate the gains from signing TILMA. In fact, most of the private-sector organizations surveyed by the Conference Board were not individual businesses, but chambers of commerce and industry associations which tend to be strongly committed to deregulation. Clearly, the “self-serving biases” among respondents would generally favour TILMA.
The Conference Board used these survey results to “score” eleven industries in seven regions of Saskatchewan. As Dr. Helliwell notes, “Since there was no research or quantitative base for this translation, it has no empirical basis, and hence cannot be treated as evidence.” The Conference Board combines its regional/industrial scores into a province-wide score, which it then treats as a percentage of GDP.
Dr. Howe defends this approach as follows: “There are arbitrary elements to the quantitative analysis by the Conference Board just as there are arbitrary elements to any quantitative analysis.” Conventional approaches to projecting the benefits of “free trade” agreements are at least based on explicit, if arbitrary, models of how the economy works and how much trade barriers cost. By contrast, the Conference Board does not even pretend to estimate the cost of existing barriers. Dr. Howe’s position seems to be that, since some arbitrariness is inevitable, any amount of arbitrariness is acceptable.
However, even if one accepts the Conference Board’s basic approach, most of its projected benefits are based on industries that are exempt from TILMA or that barely engage in inter-provincial trade. TILMA’s exemptions in the areas of energy, mining, forestry and fishing throw into question the high positive scores assigned to “primary” industry outside Regina and Saskatoon as well as the consistently positive scores assigned to “utilities”. Factoring out these nonexistent benefits reduces the credibility of forecast spin-offs for industries that barely engage in inter-provincial trade.
Retail and wholesale trade serve local consumers rather than out-of-province markets. To the extent that commercial services can be traded, the Conference Board suggests that Saskatchewan suppliers will suffer due to “increased competition from the more mature commercial services sectors of Alberta and BC.” Nevertheless, it assigns strongly positive scores to the “wholesale and retail trade” and “commercial services” industries in all seven regions. Factoring out these industries along with “primary” industry and “utilities” reduces the Conference Board’s projected benefits by three-quarters in Regina and Saskatoon, and by half in other regions.
In summary, the Conference Board sent questionnaires to a significant number of business organizations and some government agencies, miscounted the relatively few responses it received, used these responses to generate high scores for industries that do not engage in inter-provincial trade or that are largely exempt from TILMA, and then treated the final score as a fraction of GDP. This procedure does not inspire confidence in the Conference Board’s estimates. Since Dr. Howe presents no additional evidence, one is left with Dr. Helliwell’s conclusion that the impact of TILMA on Saskatchewan’s GDP would certainly be small and might be negative.
TILMA’s Costs
Whether TILMA slightly increases or slightly reduces GDP, its most important effect would be to allow private interests to sue the provincial government, Crown corporations, municipal governments, and school boards for up to $5 million for each alleged violation. Rather than simply preventing measures that discriminate among provinces, TILMA purports to “eliminate barriers that restrict or impair trade, investment or labour mobility.” Almost everything governments do influences the market and could be challenged under the agreement.
TILMA’s extremely broad language will be interpreted and applied by commercial tribunals that meet behind closed doors. While such tribunals may be necessary in adjudicating international disputes, there is no good reason to empower them in place of Canadian courts in adjudicating internal disputes. At worst, these tribunals may interpret TILMA in ways that severely restrict public policy. At best, uncertainty about possible interpretations would have a chilling effect on policy-makers who fear being sued.
To quote Dr. Helliwell, “unrestricted private access to the dispute mechanisms, combined with a commitment to neutrality of treatment, would make almost any provincial or municipal programme subject to attack. This is no doubt part of the appeal of TILMA for some. However, using expensive legal procedures to advance particular private interests is surely not the best way of providing a non-instrusive and efficient network of trade-supporting public rules and institutions.”
Defenders of TILMA argue that its exceptions would shield important public policies from challenge. However, these exceptions protect a policy only if the government can prove that there is no conceivable alternative policy. In practice, it would be extremely difficult for government to prove this negative case and extremely easy for business to suggest possible policy alternatives.
TILMA’s dispute-settlement process is based on the North American Free Trade Agreement’s (NAFTA) Chapter 11. A recent review of this notorious chapter concluded, “there are ongoing challenges related to water exports, log export controls, public postal services, Canada’s agricultural supply management system, Canadian cultural policy, and other matters which were supposedly excluded from the NAFTA.” There is no reason to believe that TILMA’s exceptions will be any more effective.
Conclusion
TILMA’s tiny potential economic benefit pales in comparison to its significant economic, social and environmental costs. Fortunately, there are far better approaches to internal trade. A more sensible process would begin with Saskatchewan businesses compiling publicly-available lists of inter-provincial barriers. Citizens could respond by assessing the economic, social and environmental purposes of these alleged barriers.
The Government of Saskatchewan could then work with other provincial governments and/or the federal government to reform measures that entail economic costs, but do not serve important policy goals. Indeed, provincial governments have already established mutually recognized credentials in many skilled trades and are currently working to harmonize licensing by professional bodies to enhance labour mobility. The few remaining inter-provincial barriers are so small that any measurable benefit could be achieved only by addressing them on a multilateral basis among all provinces.
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
TILMA deal will undermine Municipal authority
I wonder if municipalities will protest TILMA. The municipalities have meetings where they all get together to discuss issues of common concern. It will be interesting if some municipalities ask for discussion and a common position on the matter.
Alberta-BC trade deal will undermine Municipal authority
June 2, 2007 09:38 AM
Calgary – A legal opinion produced by Sack Goldblatt Mitchell sheds damaging new light on the recent Alberta-BC Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA).
Steven Shrybman, partner with the legal firm Sack Goldblatt Mitchell says that one of the very real impacts of TILMA arises not simply from the breadth of its application, “but particularly from the effectiveness of its enforcement procedures.” According to Shrybman, “TILMA empowers private parties to claim damages where it is alleged that a measure offends TILMA rules. Where a municipality, for example, refuses to remove a measure that is found to violate TILMA rules, monetary awards up to $5 million may be awarded against the province and to the private party.”
The legal opinion, produced by Shrybman for the Canadian Union of Public Employees, calls into question the independence of local governments, according to CUPE national president, Paul Moist, “If there was ever any doubt that TILMA will undermine local government authority this legal opinion should put those doubts to rest.”
“Soon we’ll find TILMA rules being invoked to challenge the regulations, programs and funding arrangements upon which public and social services depend. Citizens will begin to hear that the regulations, programs and funding arrangements put in place to encourage public services now restrict or discriminate against private sector providers,” explained Moist.
“Finally, explained Moist, because TILMA provides unprecedented grounds for asserting the interests of private companies that sell services, it is likely to become the preferred venue for those seeking to privatize public services.”
Moist questions why separate trade agreements are needed in Canada when the country already has interprovincial trade. “TILMA is not necessary. We have interprovincial trade in Canada. As most Canadians will readily recognize, Canada is a society in which people are free to live, work and invest anywhere in the country. We have no customs stations along provincial borders and no tariffs of any kind on interprovincial trade.
The question that remains for municipalities is: In light of TILMA’S dubious rationale, and uncertain but significant costs, does TILMA represent an exercise of provincial executive power that municipalities should question and oppose?” concluded Moist.
-30-
For more information: Paul Moist, CUPE national president, 613-558-2873 (cell); Steven Shrybman, partner of the legal firm Sack Goldblatt Mitchell, 613-858-6842 (cell.); Catherine Louli, CUPE communications, 613-851-0547 (cell)
Alberta-BC trade deal will undermine Municipal authority
June 2, 2007 09:38 AM
Calgary – A legal opinion produced by Sack Goldblatt Mitchell sheds damaging new light on the recent Alberta-BC Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA).
Steven Shrybman, partner with the legal firm Sack Goldblatt Mitchell says that one of the very real impacts of TILMA arises not simply from the breadth of its application, “but particularly from the effectiveness of its enforcement procedures.” According to Shrybman, “TILMA empowers private parties to claim damages where it is alleged that a measure offends TILMA rules. Where a municipality, for example, refuses to remove a measure that is found to violate TILMA rules, monetary awards up to $5 million may be awarded against the province and to the private party.”
The legal opinion, produced by Shrybman for the Canadian Union of Public Employees, calls into question the independence of local governments, according to CUPE national president, Paul Moist, “If there was ever any doubt that TILMA will undermine local government authority this legal opinion should put those doubts to rest.”
“Soon we’ll find TILMA rules being invoked to challenge the regulations, programs and funding arrangements upon which public and social services depend. Citizens will begin to hear that the regulations, programs and funding arrangements put in place to encourage public services now restrict or discriminate against private sector providers,” explained Moist.
“Finally, explained Moist, because TILMA provides unprecedented grounds for asserting the interests of private companies that sell services, it is likely to become the preferred venue for those seeking to privatize public services.”
Moist questions why separate trade agreements are needed in Canada when the country already has interprovincial trade. “TILMA is not necessary. We have interprovincial trade in Canada. As most Canadians will readily recognize, Canada is a society in which people are free to live, work and invest anywhere in the country. We have no customs stations along provincial borders and no tariffs of any kind on interprovincial trade.
The question that remains for municipalities is: In light of TILMA’S dubious rationale, and uncertain but significant costs, does TILMA represent an exercise of provincial executive power that municipalities should question and oppose?” concluded Moist.
-30-
For more information: Paul Moist, CUPE national president, 613-558-2873 (cell); Steven Shrybman, partner of the legal firm Sack Goldblatt Mitchell, 613-858-6842 (cell.); Catherine Louli, CUPE communications, 613-851-0547 (cell)
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Letter to Ottawa Citizen on TILMA
No doubt free trade is more important than democracy or any freedom of provinces to set different health safety etc. regulations. In fact rather than democracy what we need is deep integration with the US. This will allow capital free reign which is the ultimate aim of democracy under capitalist conditions. Of course this all trickles down benefits to the people for whom the government is of and for. There is bad democracy and good democracy. TILMA and deep integration stands for good democracy. Freedom to set different regulations is bad democracy.
Beware downside to latest trade deal
The Ottawa Citizen
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Re: Trading with the neighbours, May 15.
The Citizen editorial's extravagant enthusiasm for the B.C.-Alberta Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA) is seriously misplaced.
The debate about TILMA is a good example of unquestioning adherence to conventional wisdoms. In this case it's the all-too-familiar bromide that eliminating trade barriers will increase economic prosperity and equality.
Throwing cold water on this manufactured truth, though, are the facts about trade barriers and TILMA. The fact is there are very few obstacles to interprovincial trade and labour mobility. TILMA supporters in government and business are falsely claiming that differences in public interest regulation amount to trade barriers. There's no evidence that differences in regulation results in significant economic costs. In fact, the most credible research on interprovincial barriers finds they cost less than 1/20th of one per cent of GDP.
There are, however, significant downsides associated with TILMA. The agreement gives enormous power to corporations to challenge, via a disputes panel, all existing and future government regulations, including health, safety and environmental standards.
If the disputes panel decides the law or regulation "impairs" or "restricts" a corporation's investment, then the law is struck down and the government can be forced to pay $5 million in compensation to the corporation.
TILMA also eliminates local purchasing or favouring local suppliers or government support for rural development or small business, or assistance to economically depressed regions.
In effect, the provinces and all governing bodies lose their right to react to the political choice of their populations. Democratic decision-making is second-guessed by an unelected trade panel. Democracy takes a back seat to corporate interests.
TILMA booster Todd Hirsch of the Canada West Foundation says, "TILMA (is the) erasing of the provincial boundary for all purposes except voting and the colour of the license plate."
If TILMA spreads to other provinces, we could presumably eliminate provincial elections and just have referenda on the colour of our licence plates.
Governments of other provinces should look once, twice and three times before they leap into a dangerous deal they will undoubtedly regret.
Instead, any real trade barriers should simply be dealt with on a pragmatic case-by-case basis.
Larry Brown, Ottawa
Beware downside to latest trade deal
The Ottawa Citizen
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Re: Trading with the neighbours, May 15.
The Citizen editorial's extravagant enthusiasm for the B.C.-Alberta Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA) is seriously misplaced.
The debate about TILMA is a good example of unquestioning adherence to conventional wisdoms. In this case it's the all-too-familiar bromide that eliminating trade barriers will increase economic prosperity and equality.
Throwing cold water on this manufactured truth, though, are the facts about trade barriers and TILMA. The fact is there are very few obstacles to interprovincial trade and labour mobility. TILMA supporters in government and business are falsely claiming that differences in public interest regulation amount to trade barriers. There's no evidence that differences in regulation results in significant economic costs. In fact, the most credible research on interprovincial barriers finds they cost less than 1/20th of one per cent of GDP.
There are, however, significant downsides associated with TILMA. The agreement gives enormous power to corporations to challenge, via a disputes panel, all existing and future government regulations, including health, safety and environmental standards.
If the disputes panel decides the law or regulation "impairs" or "restricts" a corporation's investment, then the law is struck down and the government can be forced to pay $5 million in compensation to the corporation.
TILMA also eliminates local purchasing or favouring local suppliers or government support for rural development or small business, or assistance to economically depressed regions.
In effect, the provinces and all governing bodies lose their right to react to the political choice of their populations. Democratic decision-making is second-guessed by an unelected trade panel. Democracy takes a back seat to corporate interests.
TILMA booster Todd Hirsch of the Canada West Foundation says, "TILMA (is the) erasing of the provincial boundary for all purposes except voting and the colour of the license plate."
If TILMA spreads to other provinces, we could presumably eliminate provincial elections and just have referenda on the colour of our licence plates.
Governments of other provinces should look once, twice and three times before they leap into a dangerous deal they will undoubtedly regret.
Instead, any real trade barriers should simply be dealt with on a pragmatic case-by-case basis.
Larry Brown, Ottawa
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)