State of Play: New report reveals undemocratic trade plan for Canada

State of Play: Canada’s Internal Free Trade AgendaThe best evidence of what lies in store for governments is provided by claims now proceeding under the NAFTA dispute regime that served as the prototype for TILMA, including claims by:

Centurion Health, a US health service provider, for $160 million because it claims
that Canadian governments prevented it from establishing a chain of private
health clinics;

Dow AgroSciences, for $2 million because Quebec is banning the use of 2-4 D.

At the end of March, the Council of Canadians’ released a new report revealing that new interprovincial trade agreements threaten municipal safeguards to protect the environment, public services and communities.

Written by trade legal expert Steven Shrybman, the report, titled State of Play: Canada’s Internal Free Trade Agenda, provides analysis of the recently enacted Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA) between B.C. and Alberta, as well as the state of various trade agreements between Ontario and Quebec (OQEPA), Nova Scotia, New Brunswick (PARE) and Saskatchewan (an Economic Partnership with BC and Alberta).

The report states that agreements like TILMA serve to dismantle local control of municipalities and force labour, environmental and social policy standards to harmonize to the lowest level. It highlights the role the federal government has played in encouraging the implementation of new agreements and notes that the government has even threatened to use its constitutional powers to force their implementation. The report also investigates the connection between TILMA and other trade deals under consideration, both interprovincially and with the European Union.

“The true purpose of this domestic ‘trade’ agenda is to impose broad constraints on the exercise of governmental and public authority under the rubric of addressing trade barriers,” said Steven Shrybman.