!! TILMA - WTF ?!'s topics - tribe.net

NORTHWEST TRUTH CONVERGENCE 2008

citizen_wayne — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 02:22:47 GMT

NORTHWEST TRUTH CONVERGENCE 2008

Whether you are interested in 9/11, the SPP and Sovereignty issues, the Illegal Wars, Bill C-51, Vaccines, DU, the Fake Money System, the NWO, First Nations issues, support C.A.P. or Ron Paul, Kucininch, McKinney, etc you are invited to join us for a fun, social event liberally sprinkled with Civil Informationing, some music, and possibly a speaker or two.

July 5th at Peace Arch Park, Noon til Dusk.

DETAILS HERE http://www.fv911truth.org/convergence2008.html

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Saskatchewan Says BC-Alberta Trade Deal is Flawed: Province Will Not Join TILMA

SunflowerRae — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 16:14:11 GMT

Vancouver – After months of debate, the Saskatchewan government decided yesterday that it would not join the Trade Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA) with BC and Alberta. Citing the agreement’s broad scope and unanswered questions, the government assessed that signing on had too many risks for the province.

TILMA was signed by the premiers of Alberta and BC, without public consultation or legislative debate, in April 2006. The agreement allows corporations and individuals to sue provincial governments for any provincial or municipal government measure they feel "restricts or impairs" their investment. Under TILMA, even measures designed to protect the environment and public health are vulnerable to attack from corporate lawsuits with compensation penalties as high as $5 million.

Saskatchewan’s announcement comes as Colin Hansen, BC’s Minister of Economic Development attempts to justify TILMA’s far-ranging implications to municipalities. The Ministry is scrambling to ‘consult’ with municipalities, dozens of whom have raised serious questions about the agreement’s impacts on local autonomy and will vote on excluding municipalities from the agreement in early fall at the Union of BC Municipalities AGM.

“Once elected officials get the chance to read through TILMA, they realize that it is more like a corporate bill of rights than an agreement to enhance trade and labour mobility,” says Carleen Pickard, BC/Yukon Regional Organizer for the Council of Canadians.

“Unlike in British Columbia and Alberta, the government of Saskatchewan actually consulted academics, experts and citizens and concluded that TILMA is a bad deal. It is time for Minister Hansen to accept that, stop forcing it on BC’s municipalities, and withdraw from the Agreement.”

For more information, contact:
Carleen Pickard, 604.340.2455; cpickard@canadians.org.

For more information about TILMA, visit Canadians.Org.

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Vancouver Joins Towns Spooked by TILMA

SunflowerRae — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 02:46:46 GMT

Who really knows what will be the local impact of the Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA)? Certainly not the Vancouver city council, which passed a motion to express its concerns yesterday.

By doing so, the biggest city in B.C. added its voice to 20 jurisdictions across the province who want to be consulted before being affected by the agreement.

"We're not opposed to TILMA. There could be some good advantages for businesses. But we would like consultation and we would like those issues to be addressed," said NPA Councillor Peter Ladner yesterday, when presenting the motion.

The motion passed yesterday asked the B.C. government to exempt municipalities from TILMA until it consults with local governments on the law's impact, and to address any specific issues unique to Vancouver.

Worried about hands tied

Critics of the agreement say it could prevent local elected officials from making laws their citizens want. Premier Campbell's green initiatives, some argue, might be endangered, because under TILMA, B.C. and Alberta are not allowed to discriminate by providing better treatment for goods, persons, services or investors within their borders versus comparable ones within their province.

NPA Councillor Suzanne Anton, expressed no concern yesterday. "People in Alberta are our friends. It's ridiculous that we'd have any fear about that," she said.

The special agreement between B.C. and Alberta came into force on April 1, 2007, and is strongly supported by the Harper government. The agreement expands upon the Agreement on Internal Trade (AIT), enacted across the country 20 years ago.

For now, municipalities are not fully subject to the pact, which aims at creating a new integrated economic zone between Alberta and B.C.

Once the agreement is fully in place, by 2009, no municipalities within those provinces can maintain or establish new measures restricting the economy, unless the province shows the restriction is justified under TILMA.

'Lower the bar'

The dispute resolution procedure it creates lets individuals or businesses challenge government measures and seek compensation of up to $5 million for each successful challenge.

TILMA supporters say a similar clause is contained in a number of other agreements, such as the AIT.

But COPE Councillor David Cadman described TILMA as "an attempt to lower the bar," with dangerous consequences for the municipality.

Once the plan is fully implemented at a municipal level, projects like eco-density, or view corridors might be subject to legal challenges, he said.

The pact could also make it difficult for Vancouver to meet its greenhouse gases reduction targets of 33 per cent by 2020 and 80 per cent by 2050, Cadman said.

Sullivan supports TILMA

Cadman worries TILMA will undermine democracy if "private sector corporations" are "able to challenge rules put in place by elected individuals for the benefits of the citizens who elected them."

But Mayor Sam Sullivan doesn't see it that way. "I was more surprised to realize there are more barriers between our provinces than there are between the countries of Europe," he told the council. "This is an opportunity to deal with the citizens of Calgary as we would with the citizens of Prince George."

Stay tuned for the next municipal discussion about TILMA, to be held in Vancouver during the annual meeting of the Union of B.C. municipalities (UBCM) this fall.

http://thetyee.ca/News/2007/06/28/TILMA/

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Hansen Plays 'Jeopardy,' BC Loses

SunflowerRae — Mon, 28 May 2007 23:48:24 GMT

Finance Minister on TILMA: Bzzzz wrong!
By Murray Dobbin
Published: May 24, 2007

Now that the wheels are starting to fall off the PR bus promoting the Trade, Investment, and Labour Mobility Agreement, Colin Hansen is complaining that the agreement is getting unfair media coverage.

Minister of Economic Development Hansen attempted to set the province's media straight last month in what he called a "technical briefing." He's firing off long op-eds on TILMA to newspapers that publish letters to the editor critical of the agreement. But as Hansen struggles to explain why the government is right and critics are wrong about TILMA, you can almost hear that Jeopardy buzzer for incorrect answers go off with all the mistakes he makes on fundamental points.

Hansen does not seem to be aware of the unprecedented thing he did by signing TILMA. He committed B.C., on pain of having to pay millions of dollars in penalties, to not maintaining or introducing obstacles to investment. You only have to think about that for a moment to realize why other investment agreements like NAFTA do not go that far. Pretty much anything a government does -- from restricting private investment in public health to preventing urban sprawl -- can be seen as an obstacle to investment.

Hansen would have us believe that TILMA's "no obstacles to investment" clause is not a big deal because it was already written into Canada's existing Agreement on Internal Trade. A quick look at the Agreement on Internal Trade shows it does NOT say there can be no obstacles to investment. Can Hansen really be that ill-informed on such a critical point?

Weird rulings

Having claimed that TILMA will somehow attract billions of new investment dollars to B.C., Hansen is now downplaying its investment provisions, saying the agreement only applies to "border measures." Supposedly regulations applied within the province are safe. But what "border measures" are in place to stop the flow of investment from Alberta and B.C.? Does B.C. have a secret Investment Review Agency, where it turns down Albertans' investment? Albertans already invest widely in B.C, as anyone living in areas of the province with a real estate boom knows.

What TILMA in fact does is allow challenges to provincial regulations, programmes, or policies if these "restrict or impair" an investment.

A senior official in Canada's trade department, Allison Young, has explained that the business of trade negotiation "no longer deals solely with 'at the border issues' such as tariff reduction but is now grappling with 'behind the border' domestic regulatory concerns." The reach of these agreements into areas previously considered purely domestic is one reason why governments are now being hit by loss after loss of their regulatory authority at the hands of trade panels.

Some examples of these losses? At the WTO, a panel has ruled against Europe for delaying approval of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Under investment agreements, a panel has ruled against Mexico and required it pay millions in compensation for having declared an area an ecological reserve. Another dispute panel ruled against Chile for letting local zoning bylaws block a foreign company's housing development on agricultural land.

Canada is currently being challenged under NAFTA because of its restrictions on Lindane, a pesticide banned in 50 countries, and also because the Ontario government turned down development of a waste dump.

The special risk posed by TILMA is that it goes further than any other agreement in providing grounds for investors' complaints against these kinds of regulatory decisions.

America's reach

Hansen is trying to assure local governments their bylaws are protected from challenges under TILMA's "no obstacles to investment" rule as long as they treat B.C. and Alberta investors the same. But that's not what the article says, and dispute panels are barred from reading into an agreement words that are not there. And when asked whether B.C. and Alberta would issue a binding interpretation that only discrimination could be challenged under this TILMA article, Hansen threw cold water on the idea. He said that TILMA's no obstacles rule "serves us well."

TILMA does impose -- in a separate article -- a requirement that investors from across the border be given the best treatment afforded local investors. Hansen seems blissfully unaware just how much risk governments face under this requirement not to "discriminate." If a company can prove to the satisfaction of a panel that its product is "like" one produced by a local company, it can demand the same treatment. Trade law is littered with bizarre panel rulings on this point, such as bedroom slippers should be considered "like" outdoor shoes.

It would be funny if these rulings did not have real effects. Canada lost a NAFTA case and had to pay compensation to an American company because a panel ruled that shipping toxic PCBs across the border to be processed in the U.S. was "like" having them handled in Canada. The panel said NAFTA's non-discrimination rules meant Canada had to treat the American company, wanting to do the work outside Canada, the same as companies located in Canada. So a TILMA panel could rule the B.C. government had to treat work done in Alberta the same as work done in B.C.

UPS, the American courier company, is currently challenging Canada under NAFTA saying that its private, for-profit services are like the ones offered by Canada Post and should be given the same treatment by the Canadian government. The UPS case illustrates how the non-discrimination rules in NAFTA and TILMA can be used to challenge public services.

'Subject to attack'

In his assessment of TILMA, UBC Professor of Economics John Helliwell (a recognized expert in internal trade matters) has concluded:

"In general, the combination of unrestricted access to the dispute mechanisms combined with a commitment to neutrality of treatment would make almost any provincial or municipal programme subject to attack."

But Hansen is now trying to entice local governments to allow the agreement to be extended to them by 2009 -- sort of a Final Jeopardy round where the opportunities for private investors to launch TILMA challenges would expand exponentially. Hansen is claiming that the B.C. and Alberta governments direct and control TILMA dispute panels -- even though the independence of TILMA panels and the binding character of their decisions was supposed to be the agreement's major improvement over the Agreement on Internal Trade.

Hansen told journalists in his April 26 media briefing:

"There is also a provision -- it's in Article 33 [actually Article 34] -- that says any time the two governments can actually issue an interpretation and this is unlike other agreements in that if we for example saw that a particular panel was going down a wrong track, pursuing an objective that wasn't consistent with what TILMA was meant to accomplish, then we could actually issue an interpretation that would be binding on the panels."

So there goes that wrong answer buzzer again. TILMA is in fact not unlike other agreements in this regard -- NAFTA also says that its signatories can issue joint interpretations binding on dispute panels. But in all but one case this provision has not shielded governments from negative panel rulings.

Too bad TILMA is not just a game like Jeopardy, where the minister's wrong answers would be embarrassing but wouldn't put the public interest at risk.

http://thetyee.ca/Views/2007/05/24/BCJeopardy/?utm_source=mondayheadlines&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=280507

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latest news

cucumberninja — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 18:57:00 GMT

http://www.thetyee.ca/Bigstory/2007/03/09/TradeDebate/

so now that the motion for debate was defeated in the legislature, what's the next step? we need to keep up the opposition to this in any way we can.

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websites

devon8 — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 05:32:38 GMT

http://www.stoptilma.com/ !

Also good:

http://www.canadians.org/DI/issues/TILMA/index.html

http://www.policyalternatives.ca/

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Trade agreement could terminate B.C.'s climate plan

SunflowerRae — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 17:42:42 GMT

Gordon Campbell would like to think he's upstaging Arnold Schwarzenegger by proposing strict new environmental regulations. But a little-known trade agreement with Alberta could end up terminating any effort to fight climate change, says the Council of Canadians.

On April 1, 2007, the relatively unknown Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA) between B.C. and Alberta will go into effect. “After that date, both provinces can be sued by corporations or individuals for exactly the kind of regulatory changes B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell is proposing in his new environmental plan,” says Carleen Pickard, B.C. spokesperson for the Council of Canadians.

TILMA, which was signed into law without public debate last April, is a legally binding agreement between Alberta and B.C. that gives businesses and individuals the right to sue either province when they feel that any regulation or other government policy “restricts or impairs” investment. B.C.’s plan for higher tailpipe emissions standards on new vehicles, anti-idling measures for transport trucks, new low-carbon fuel standards and stricter rules on methane-capture at private landfills will all impair investment and are therefore vulnerable to attack under TILMA.

“TILMA also forbids the introduction of new standards or regulations after April 1, 2007,” adds Pickard. “B.C.’s proposed climate plan is clearly incompatible with this new trade and investment agreement, which is a perfect example of why TILMA should never have been signed in the first place.”

“The Council of Canadians applauds any efforts to deal with climate change,” says Pickard. “But clearly the B.C. government is going to have to either scrap its new climate plans or scrap TILMA. Considering the overwhelming public support for environmental measures, Premier Campbell would be wise to scrap TILMA first.”

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MARCH 5-Public Forum in Vancouver on TILMA

catalystism — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 01:12:29 GMT

Public Forum on TILMA
When: March 5, 7:00 - 9:00pm
Where: Vancouver Public Library
Basement level, Alma Van Dusen and Peter Kay rooms

Admission is free and open to the public. For more information, please
contact the Council of Canadians, 604.688.8846.

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Thanks ....

citizen_wayne — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 16:42:53 GMT

thanks for great info ! ..... i think

Sounds like we're screwed

!!TILMA!! - WTO ?!

!!OMG!!

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Vancouver City Council touches the surface

cucumberninja — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 05:20:04 GMT

Hi everyone,
Check out the link, second to last page under Section: Inquiries and Other Matters.

http://vancouver.ca/ctyclerk/cclerk/20070116/documents/minutes.pdf

Please make an effort to contact Councillor Cadman and give him support for bringing this to the table within Vancouver City Council.

As per the previous post by Devon, on actions we can take, I was wondering if anyone has tried to include Libby Davies in this discussion? I think she would be a great person at the federal level to pull this into the limelight.

Ryan

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April Fools?

starlingshining — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 03:28:58 GMT

Corporate Rights Deal to Make Us April Fools
TILMA will strip our ability to set local limits.
By Murray Dobbin Published: January 24, 2007 http://thetyee.ca/Views/2007/01/24/TILMA/

By now most Tyee readers will have heard of TILMA, the corporate rights agreement signed by Gordon Campbell and Ralph Klein in April of last year. The agreement -- the Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement -- was first pitched as a deal that would create a western "powerhouse" of the two fastest growing provinces.

But that populist bromide didn't last long when it was discovered this fall that TILMA is actually being peddled to every province in the country and is backed heavily by the Harper government.

What TILMA is actually intended to do is to advance another, much larger agenda, the one often referred to as "deep integration" and now a formal agreement between the three NAFTA partners. It's called the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP). The SPP will see Canada effectively harmonize virtually every important area of public policy with the U.S.: defence, foreign policy, energy (they get security, we get greenhouse gases), culture, social policy, tax policy, drug testing and safety and much more.
But to "harmonize" Canadian public policy with the U.S. requires massive deregulation across the country. Much of that regulation is provincial and municipal, over which Ottawa has no control. That's where TILMA comes in. I have to admit it's clever, if they ultimately get away with it. Prepare the country for assimilation into the U.S. by promoting an agreement that claims to be about domestic, inter-provincial trade.

What will be harmonized through TILMA is simple enough. A fundamental political difference between Canada and the U.S. is that they have property rights in their constitution and we do not. That's no accident. When the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was negotiated between the federal government and the provinces, the idea of property rights was vigorously discussed -- and then rejected. Canada's tradition of activist government and strong social programs demanded that social rights trump the rights of investors. TILMA does an end run around that historic, democratic decision and the constitution.

Stripping our authority

At the core of TILMA is its draconian investment provisions.
They are rooted in the ever-expanding definition of property rights in the U.S., expressed in something called "regulatory takings" -- in other words, expropriation by regulation. That is what NAFTA Chapter 11 is all about. Companies can sue Canada if any regulation effectively "expropriates" the value of their property, including their capacity to make a profit.
But TILMA goes far beyond NAFTA because individuals can demand compensation (up to $5 million per challenge) if a regulation or law merely "restricts or impairs" an investment. This is an extremely low threshold for a legal challenge. One article in TILMA states outright there shall be "no obstacle" to trade, investment or labour mobility. It could release a flood of litigation. A similar law in Oregon just dealing with land use has resulted in over 6,000 claims worth $6 billion.

TILMA comes into affect, appropriately, on April Fool's Day. There is a two-year phase-in for municipalities and school boards, and the agreement also applies to crown corporations.

What sorts of things could be affected?

When fully implemented, TILMA would allow legal challenges to the location and size of commercial signs, environmental set-backs for developers, zoning, building height restrictions, pesticide bans, and green space requirements in urban areas.
It also could allow challenges to restrictions on private health clinics, halt stricter rules for nursing homes and almost certainly overturn the current ban on junk food in B.C. schools.

With respect to the environment, regulations regarding air quality are at risk, as are restrictions on tourist developments, the establishment of ecological reserves, the Agricultural Land Reserves and the authority of the Islands Trusts.
There are exceptions to the agreement and a list of legitimate "objectives" that governments can try to protect. But even here, they have to prove to an independent dispute panel that the objective was met with the least possible restriction to business -- a very tough challenge.

Deregulation domino theory

Most so-called "trade" agreements (none of them are actually about trade, they are about investors' rights) open up an investor challenge only if a regulation or "measure" is discriminatory; that is, if it treats an investor from one country differently than another. TILMA has such a clause (Article 4) but in addition it has a clause (Article 5) that enforces what is called "mutual recognition." That means, for example, that an investor from Alberta can choose to bring with him to B.C. the Alberta regulations that apply to his business. One example is Vancouver rent controls. An Alberta investor could build or buy an apartment block in Vancouver and use TILMA's Article 5 to demand that rent controls not apply to his apartments.

If you have trouble believing this, here's what federal Industry Minister Maxime Bernier told the Senate banking committee when testifying about TILMA. "Mutual recognition is an important principle from the economic standpoint because...such a situation places regulators in competition with one another [for having the weakest regulations]." This is a clear expression of the race to the bottom, but perhaps the first time a government minister has ever admitted it.

There is full court press on to get TILMA implemented across the country before the citizenry figures out what is going on. A critical player in that campaign is the Conference Board of Canada (CBoC) a think-tank that until now, at least, has played a relatively moderate role in its research studies on public policy. The CBoC has done a whole flurry of studies (including a major one last week) raising the alarm about the allegedly devastating economic impact inter-provincial trade barriers are having on Canadian productivity and growth. It's an odd crisis because business has said virtually nothing about such barriers over the years. That is because such barriers, as normally understood, are minimal. That was the conclusion of a 1998 study done for the B.C. government by UBC economist Brian Copeland.
But according to the CBoC, the barriers are so onerous that if we got rid of them -- just between B.C. and Alberta -- B.C.'s GDP would leap by $4.6 billion a year. That is an amount equivalent to half our current exports to Alberta and 3.8 per cent of provincial GDP -- over 10 times previous estimates of such barriers done by Industry Canada.

To arrive at this inflated figure, Conference Board researchers arbitrarily assigned numbers to TILMA's effects in each economic sector. The study contains no hard data, no reference to other literature with actual evidence, no interviews with company CEOs, and, remarkably, no list of actual barriers to trade or investment. The study's huge numbers rely in large part on the benefits TILMA would provide to the resources sector: forestry, fisheries and mining. But these sectors are actually exempted from the agreement so will get no benefits whatsoever.

Just say whoa!

There is no attempt, either, to justify the study's unorthodox methodology, which seems designed to result in its radical conclusions. A CBoC survey sent to selected Saskatchewan businesses for the government there painted a very positive picture of TILMA with almost no references to potential down-sides. Indeed, the Conference Board's objectivity was put into serious question when Glen Hodgson, its chief economist, appeared before the Senate Banking Committee and declared: "We strongly endorse and welcome the agreement between B.C. and Alberta..."

As for the national cost of inter-provincial trade barriers, the CBoC admits it has no idea. It disavows the one per cent figure being attributed to the Conference Board by B.C. and Alberta politicians to promote the deal. Paul Darby, Conference Board deputy chief economist stated: "The figures don't exist. Nobody knows."

Opposition to TILMA is growing both here and in other provinces like Saskatchewan, and in the next few weeks promises to expand as municipalities, school boards, environmental groups and ordinary citizens find out about the agreement. But the promoters of this libertarian assault on government have a big head start. Much of the ability of governments to act in the public interest hangs in the balance.

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Public Forum on T.I.L.M.A

catalystism — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 03:40:04 GMT

Public Forum on T.I.L.M.A (Trade, Investment, and Labour Mobility Agreement)

BC and Alberta have inked a new pact:
Trade, Investment, and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA)
that will increase privatization, allow private investores to challenge
public programs, policies and regulations, and restrict governments'
ability to act in the public interest.

Discuss what social activists can do about it.

7:30pm - Wednesday, January 17th
Maritime Labour Centre, 1880 Triumph at Victoria
Vancouver, BC

Background info...

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/westview/story/3758460p-4345834c.html

Agreement cuts provincial powers to govern

Winnipeg Free Press

Fri Nov 3 2006

By Murray Dobbin

WHAT if a provincial government signed an agreement forcing it to make
most of its regulations identical to those of another province? What if
this government voluntarily made itself, and every municipality within
its borders, open to lawsuits over virtually anything it did that
restricted investment? What if it tied its own hands so that, no matter
how much a region was suffering economically, it could not provide
assistance that might "distort investment decisions?"

Well, there are no "what ifs" about it. This past spring, B.C.'s Gordon
Campbell and Alberta's Ralph Klein signed an agreement with exactly
these sweeping constraints on the ability to govern. It is called the
Trade, Investment, and Labour Mobility Agreement. B.C. and Alberta trade
officials are now shopping it around to other provinces to get them to
sign on. The agreement comes into effect next April.

According to Todd Hirsch of the Canada West Foundation, the agreement
could erase the borders between B.C. and Alberta so that the only
differences between them will be "voting and the colour of the licence
plate."

Except, once the agreement comes into full force, voting provincially in
B.C. and Alberta could be a waste of time.

Under the agreement, the B.C. or Alberta government will be barred from
doing anything that could "impair or restrict" trade, not only between
the provinces but also through them to another province or country. One
article just flatly decrees that there shall be "No Obstacles" to this
trade.

Governments will be prohibited from providing subsidies that either
directly or indirectly "distort investment decisions."
Click here to find out more!
Some exceptions, such as for water, are permitted but even these are to
be reviewed annually to get them reduced.

The agreement also requires B.C. and Alberta to "mutually recognize or
otherwise reconcile their existing standards and regulations" if these
"impair or restrict" trade, investment or labour mobility. Then it
prohibits new regulations from being introduced that would have these
effects. Since regulation always restricts investment in some way, the
result will be that all future B.C. and Alberta governments will be
prevented from strengthening their regulations.

How exactly is this going to work? What would happen, for example, if
B.C. voters decided they had had enough of leaky condos and voted for a
party committed to tougher construction regulations? A government
elected on such a commitment would quickly find it had to betray its
promise or be vulnerable to a trade investment challenge.

Plus if either province considers any new initiatives, it has to give
the other party to the agreement the right to comment in advance and is
then obligated to "take the other province's comments into
consideration." In sharp contrast, citizens in B.C. and Alberta were
never consulted by their own governments on this astonishing agreement.

As part of their sales job, Alberta's Gary Mar and B.C.'s Colin Hansen
have claimed the agreement will not result in lower provincial standards
-- just ones that are "appropriate." In reality, however, the agreement
can only lead to deregulation because businesses are only likely to sue
governments over regulations they think are too high, not ones that are
too weak. In a vastly expanded version of provisions in NAFTA, any
resident of B.C. or Alberta will gain extensive new grounds to sue
government. A dispute panel will be empowered to make binding decisions
and grant compensation of up to $5 million for any government action
that violates the agreement. Repeated complaints can be taken about the
same government policy or regulation.

Governments can go on bended knee to trade investment panels and argue
that their regulations were "necessary," but trade dispute panels rarely
accept such arguments. Plus, this agreement only recognizes a limited
list of regulatory objectives as "legitimate."

For example, a city's desire to prevent urban blight is not on the list
of legitimate objectives, so municipal bans on billboards would likely
be a violation.

No wonder Gary Mar could tell a business audience in Richmond that the
dispute process is "everything Canadian business asked for."
The pact creates endless potential for litigation against government
right down to the school board level, without any demonstrable benefit.
A 1998 study done for the B.C. government found that: "efforts to
liberalize interprovincial trade will have almost no effect on trade
flows. The reality is that interprovincial trade barriers are already
very low."

As for labour mobility, all of provisions for increased labour mobility
will already be covered in Premier Gary Doer's initiative to see
professional requirements harmonized across Canada.

To sum up, the agreement pretty much bans new regulation and government
assistance for economic development. Perhaps in anticipation of the
pact, the B.C. legislature's fall sitting was cancelled with the
government claiming there was not enough to do. When asked about the
constitutionality of the agreement, Steven Shrybman, a partner in the
law firm of Sack, Goldblatt, and Mitchell, commented that "a basic
principle of constitutional law is that a government cannot fetter its
own legislative prerogatives by abandoning its authority to govern."

Sounds like what the Trade, Investment, and Labour Mobility Agreement is
all about.

Murray Dobbin is a Vancouver-based writer.

fighting till my last breath (in action and words),
jax

(jaxfitzgibbon@yahoo.ca)

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fwd: ACTION PLAN for Chapters to Defeat TILMA

devon8 — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 23:52:11 GMT

As I wrote to you on November 23, the Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA) is a dangerous new aspect to the deep integration agenda with the United States and must be stopped.

Already at the Pacific Northwest Economic Region conference this past July in Edmonton, representatives of north-western US states and British Columbia and Alberta committed to explore the possibility of expanding TILMA throughout the PNWER region, which includes Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington.

Moreover, the United States Trade Representative has made repeated complaints about differences in provincial regulations in Canada. TILMA can be seen as a "made-to-please-Bush" attempt to address this U.S. concern.

For further information on the implications of TILMA, including its impact on municipalities, go to the Council of Canadians website at http://www.canadians.org/DI/issues/TILMA/index.html As new articles and analysis appears, we are adding those resources to this section of our website.

And while TILMA at this point is an agreement between the British Columbia and Alberta governments, it is rapidly spreading across the country. Saskatchewan and Ontario are very supportive of it, and a key business lobby group, the Atlantic Provinces Economic Council, is calling for a version of TILMA for Quebec and the Atlantic provinces. This makes it a Canada-wide concern.

The Council of Canadians is calling on its chapter activists across the country to take action against TILMA by:

1. Identifying one key public figure in your community and encouraging them to express opposition to TILMA. This individual could be a municipal councillor, provincial legislator, federal MP, school board official, or someone else with a profile and influence in your community and area government. The idea here is to find someone with good political connections to advance these concerns for us within the corridors of power.

2. Taking a municipal resolution that would have your municipal Clerk's office prepare a report for your municipal council outlining the possible impact of TILMA on your community and making those concerns known to your provincial government. This is an excellent way to get city staff researching this issue, encouraging political debate on it, and having the credibility of a municipality behind our concerns.

3. Distributing Council materials on TILMA in your community, writing a letter to the editor when a TILMA report appears in your local newspaper, and generally assisting in the ways available to you within your limited time to widen public awareness of this issue.

By demonstrating a diverse and strong level of opposition to TILMA across the country, we hope to DEFEAT the trade agreement in British Columbia and Alberta, PREVENT it from spreading to other provinces and territories across the country, and STOP federal Industry Minister Maxime Bernier and the Harper government from promoting this dangerous agreement.

In order to achieve this, the Council of Canadians will be developing a backgrounder for chapter activists, a briefing note on TILMA that you can present to key public figures, and a sample municipal resolution that you can take to a progressive councillor to champion. These materials will be available shortly.

We are very pleased that the prominent writer and chapter activist Murray Dobbin as well as writer/ researcher Ellen Gould have agreed to provide analysis to the Council to assist us in this important work.

The British Columbia-Alberta TILMA has been signed and will come into effect in April 2007. We are actively pursuing confirmation on whether or not enabling legislation must go to those legislatures to enact TILMA. This information will be key in shaping the most effective political strategy for chapters in British Columbia and Alberta in the days to come.

We also know that a draft proposal on a version of TILMA will be considered by the provincial government in Nova Scotia by April 2007. It is also still possible that Ontario and Saskatchewan could sign on to this agreement in a matter of mere weeks.

For further guidance on this issue, to learn more about the activities in your region, and to share information on the work you are doing on this issue please be sure to be in touch with your regional organizer:

CARLEEN PICKARD, British Columbia-Yukon organizer, cpickard@canadians.org
LYN GORMAN, Prairies organizer, lgorman@canadians.org
CLIFF WHITE, Atlantic organizer, cwhite@canadians.org
EDUARDO SOUSA, Ontario-Quebec organizer, esousa@canadians.org

Thanks,
Brent

Brent Patterson
Director of Organizing
The Council of Canadians
700-170 Laurier Avenue West
Ottawa, Ontario K1P 5V5
1-800-387-7177 ext. 291
bpatterson@canadians.org
www.canadians.org

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A Summary of Its Impacts by Ellen Gould

starlingshining — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 01:38:46 GMT

The BC/Alberta Trade, Investment, and Labour Mobility Agreement
A Summary of Its Impacts by Ellen Gould

“Within the TILMA are the seeds of a true economic union, an erasing of the provincial
boundary for all purposes except voting and the color of the license plate.” Todd Hirsch, Canada West Foundation, July 15, 2006

If the Campbell government was going to erase the border with Alberta, shouldn't it have had a consultation with the province's citizens first? The “Trade, Investment, and Labour Mobility Agreement” (TILMA) was signed by Alberta and BC in April 2006. It is posted on the Internet at http://tinyurl.com/krqrb [please note: this opens an interesting but large .pdf file]. With no public consultation process, Campbell and Klein signed this agreement that (among other things):

- Allows private individuals to sue and get up to $5 million compensation for regulations, policies, and programs that “impair or restrict” investment, trade, or labour mobility. Alberta and BC will also be able to sue each other for any violation of the agreement. A three person dispute panel will have the power to make legally binding decisions that will compel these governments to change their policies, no matter how popular these policies are.

- Is a major step towards "deep integration" with the US. Complaints about differences in provincial regulations are made repeatedly by the US Trade Representative. At the most recent Pacific Northwest Economic Region conference, representatives of north western US states and BC and Alberta committed to explore the possibility of "expanding the B.C.-Alberta Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA) /concept/ throughout the PNWER region."

- Goes far beyond NAFTA in enabling commercial interests to sue for regulations they don’t like. NAFTA allows private investors to sue under NAFTA’s Chapter 11, but TILMA allows these suits over “any matter regarding the interpretation or application of this Agreement.” While TILMA restricts compensation to $5 million, private interests could all line up to get compensated once one complaint has been successful. This will force governments to change their policies. Alberta’s Minister of International and Intergovernmental Relations, Gary Mar, Alberta Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, told the Richmond Chamber of Commerce in June 2006 that the TILMA dispute process is “everything Canadian business asked for”.

- Massively deregulates. The agreement says in Article 3 that there shall be “No Obstacles” that would impair or restrict “trade through the territory of the Parties, or investment or labour mobility between the Parties” and that “Parties shall not establish new standards or regulations that operate to restrict or impair trade, investment or labour mobility.” There are some limited exceptions allowed for in the agreement, such as water, but these are to be reviewed annually to reduce their scope.

All government regulation will be affected because any regulation could be seen as in some way restricting investment. And even if a regulation fits with one of the objectives TILMA accepts as being legitimate, it can still be successfully challenged if it is not the least restrictive way to achieve the objective.

- Recognizes only certain government objectives as legitimate. Among the objectives not recognized as legitimate are the preservation of agricultural land, the conservation of heritage sites, the maintenance of scenic views, or the promotion of small business, neighbourhood or rural development.

Some examples of regulations that would be vulnerable to challenge on the grounds that they are not based on “legitimate objectives” and restrict investment are the Agricultural Land Reserve, municipal bans on billboards, municipal development restrictions to maintain the quality of neighbourhoods.

- Makes BC and Alberta regulations the same - forever. Aside from some limited exceptions, BC and Alberta will have to “mutually recognize or otherwise reconcile their existing standards and regulations”. All BC mining regulations, for example, will forever have to be as minimal as those of Alberta’s, regardless of changes in government. This binding obligation lessens the value of the right to vote in each province, as the government of one province would not be permitted to increase standards and regulations beyond what exists in the other province.

- Covers all government “entities” – Crown corporations, local governments, school boards, universities, private agencies on contract with the government - and subjects their policies to potential challenges. Although there is supposed to be a consultation process with these entities in a transition period until 2009, the agreement already requires that none of their measures is “amended or renewed in a manner that would decrease its consistency with this Agreement.” This means all local governments, for example, already cannot initiate anything that might violate the agreement.

- Eliminates political choice. TILMA commits all future BC and Alberta governments to automatically support expansion of trade agreements. It commits all future BC and Alberta governments to promote cross-border transfers of energy, including to the US.

- Will allow all purchasing decisions by provincial governments, local governments, Crown Corporations, school boards, and universities to be challenged and overturned for purchases costing as little as $10,000.

- Bans government support for rural development, small business, and economically depressed regions. Targets any agricultural support. Government assistance that "distorts investment decisions" is a violation of the agreement.

- Undermines the democratic process in each province by granting political rights to non-citizens. Each provincial government, as well as local governments in each province, will be obligated when they are doing anything that might be covered by TILMA to "provide the other Party [BC or Alberta] with an opportunity to comment on the measure, and take such comments into consideration."

In other words, the governments of BC and Alberta have created greater rights for interests outside of their provinces to intervene in the legislative process than they have guaranteed for voters in their own provinces. This is especially ironic given the lack of consultation British Columbians and Albertans were afforded in the creation of TILMA.

- Is being promoted on a false basis. Alberta and BC politicians are selling the agreement on the claim that supposedly show "billions" could be saved by eliminating so-called inter-provincial trade barriers. These claims have been repeatedly debunked by economists. Real barriers to inter-provincial trade are minimal. The claims about inter-provincial barriers are really an attack on government's right to regulate.

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