OCHU

State of Play: Canada’s Internal Free Trade Agenda

Executive Summary

Canadian trade officials are working to establish a comprehensive set of federal, provincial and territorial agreements concerning trade, investment and labour mobility. The flagship of this enterprise is the Agreement on Internal Trade 1995 (“AIT”) which is now being expanded, and has recently spawned bi-lateral trade agreements between some provinces.

For example, federal and provincial trade Ministers have recently signed agreements on dispute resolution and labour mobility - an energy agreement is pending. The Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement (“TILMA”) formally goes into effect between Alberta and British Columbia on April 1, 2009. Download full booklet...

Say bye to buy local

How secret trade deals threaten our local economies, jobs and the environment and weaken our community
Dear concerned Ontarians,
We are pleased to offer this booklet that provides analysis on Canadian trade agreements and the impact they have on local economies and our communities. We are currently suffering multiple crises – an economic crisis that threatens our jobs and livelihoods, an environmental crisis that threatens our habitat, and an energy crisis that demands we move away from fossil fuel and a reliance on long-distance trade. In times like these, we need our municipal, provincial and federal governments to be innovative and responsive to the communities they represent, as well as the international community we are all part of. We need governments to recognize, like so many people already do, that many of the solutions to all these crises are going to be local solutions.
Unfortunately, the Ontario government is now signing and endorsing interprovincial and international agreements that will restrict what provinces and municipalities can do to protect the environment, save existing jobs and create new ones, strengthen public services, and support local economies. These agreements say that local solutions are “barriers” to trade and investment and must therefore be eliminated. Democratic solutions lose out to business-friendly objectives. Download full booklet...

The “Buy America” Boogeyman

Why we’re more concerned with Harper’s solution than we are the alleged problem of spending public money locally

There has been much concern and confusion in Canada around the Obama administration’s proposed stimulus legislation, which contains a “Buy American” clause stating the following: “None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used for a project for the construction, alteration, maintenance, or repair of a public building or public work unless all of the iron, steel, and manufactured goods used in the project are produced in the United States.” The law is a temporary measure aimed at boosting the national economy, which suffered a major blow when the U.S. banking and real estate markets collapsed last year, dragging the global economy down with them, with disproportionate pain felt by developing nations.

Despite the magnitude of the crisis and its roots in broader structural problems with hands-off, neoliberal economics, North American cities are taking the blame. While there is currently nothing in NAFTA or the WTO that stops provincial, state or municipal governments from implementing local procurement initiatives, and “Buy American” policies been in place at the state and federal level in the United States since 1933, the U.S. stimulus plan has come under intense fire from the Harper government, which calls it "protectionist". Municipalities have asked the federal government to lobby Washington to have Canadian companies exempted from “Buy American” requirements, and some cities are threatening to implement procurement policies that would restrict U.S. companies from bidding on infrastructure projects in retaliation. Most Canadian unions, on the other hand, support the idea behind “Buy American” and are asking for similar measures in Canada for publicly funded infrastructure projects.

Profiting from municipal frustration, and exaggerating the impact that the U.S. stimulus package will have on Canadian companies, the Harper government has proposed something quite different – an ambitious new agreement with the United States that could bind provinces, states, territories and cities to international trade rules prohibiting any conditions on local government procurement (i.e. spending on infrastructure, goods or services). Those conditions could include minimum local content rules for materials or services, ethical purchasing policies, commitments to hire from the community, or any requirement that companies reinvest a portion of revenues or profits locally. There is little, if any, evidence that further deregulating local and provincial economies in this way would benefit the companies that have been shut out of U.S. infrastructure contracts, or the Canadian cities and towns in which these companies operate. And the federal proposal would unfairly and unreasonably restrict the powers of local governments to set economic and social policies at a time when they need that flexibility most.

While Prime Minister Harper refuses to renegotiate NAFTA to improve labour and environmental protections, he’s willing to open up the agreement to bind municipalities and provinces to trade rules curbing their powers over local economies. Local procurement is not the problem. In fact, it is one of the last vestiges of public control over how local communities develop and grow, and an important tool in growing their economies.

...From The Council of Canadians Website.