Robin Boadway on Internal Trade

“Balkanization of our national economic space . . . thicket of provincial barriers.” – Conference Board of Canada, Mission Possible, 2007 “Our federation has been a ‘mini global economy’ for decades. There are virtually no internal barriers to labour and capital mobility, and no tariff-like distortions on interprovincial trade.” – Robin Boadway, “National Tax Policy for an International Economy: Comments,” […]

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The Economist gets high on TILMA

The Economist so fetishizes “free trade” that it eagerly swallows TILMA without bothering to do any fact-checking. The way this is framed below, you would think people in BC are cheering that they will finally be able to buy Alberta oil. As for evidence, the article points to the Fraser Institute, who has not done any research on the topic […]

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How TILMA’s economic benefits were manufactured

BC’s Economic Development Minister Colin Hansen has been waving around at every opportunity a study by the Conference Board of Canada that allegedly demonstrate the benefits the deal will bring. When the report was finally released to the public this past January, Erin Weir and I were so shocked at how shabby the research was that we wrote a paper […]

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Advantage Canada and Trade Deals

Advantage Canada is the “economic plan” released with November’s Economic and Fiscal Update. In reading through it yesterday, I was struck by its statements about a couple of “free trade” agreements. Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA) Marc and I demonstrate that there are few tangible examples of trade barriers between provinces and no evidence that such barriers entail significant […]

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TILMA Bibliography

The following is intended to be a complete and accessible list of papers, but not articles, on TILMA. If I have missed anything, please link to it in a “comment.” Criticism of TILMA Gerlach, Loretta. Examining the Implications of TILMA for Saskatchewan. Regina: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, 2006. Gould, Ellen. Asking for Trouble: The Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility […]

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TILMA in the News

Yesterday and the day before, several newspapers posted the following story about TILMA. Although it is disappointing to read uncritical reporting of the Conference Board’s $4.8-billion figure, it is good to see the Canadian Press report that “The NDP governments in Saskatchewan and Manitoba have said they’re not interested in signing on.” While opponents of TILMA should remain vigilant in Saskatchewan […]

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BC’s climate plan and TILMA

Craig MacInnis in his Vancouver Sun column compares Alberta’s intransigence on oil and gas with BC’s new green laurels. What he misses is TILMA. Having signed this deal (there is still time to pull out) that will definitely impact Alberta’s oil and gas sector, BC is giving them a club to bash the provincial government over the head. Alberta Premier […]

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The TILMA papers

The CCPA released two papers today on the Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement, one by Ellen Gould that looks at the potential risks posed by the deal’s sweeping language, and a second by myself and Erin Weir, on the contrived economic case made for TILMA. Both papers can be downloaded here. Below is the press release, which provides a […]

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BC’s new global warming plan?

This story below was the front page banner headline on Saturday’s Vancouver Sun. It is a pretty exciting thought that BC might seek to emulate California with aggressive emissions targets. And between the lines, there appears to be some backtracking with regard to the approval of two new coal-fired power plants (which would be the first in BC, and are […]

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Legal advice on TILMA

Steven Shrybman, a lawyer at Sack Goldblatt Mitchell, offers a short summary of TILMA, drawing from a longer legal opinion in development: February, 2007 [Updated version] Re: A Very Short Synposis of TILMA In April, 2006, Alberta and British Columbia entered into a Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement (“TILMA”). Certain provisions of the scheme went into effect at that […]

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The Devil wears TILMA

Murray Dobbin, in his Tyee column, connects the dots between North American integration and the BC-Alberta deregulation deal known as TILMA. The danger is that Saskatchewan fails to contain the prairie fire, and it roars eastward. Dobbin paints some very plausible scenarios of what might transpire under TILMA’s investor-to-province dispute setlement scheme. To me, it is more about uncertainty – […]

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More on the Conference Board and TILMA

Ellen Gould has noted that the Conference Board’s report projects gains for industries that are explicitly exempted from TILMA: utilities, energy, mining, forestry, and fishing. The Conference Board’s analysis was based on a “draft negotiators’ text” (see page 39). However, the actual agreement wholly or partly exempts the industries listed above (see pages 19-20 and 22). These exempt industries could conceivably still benefit from lower […]

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TILMA’s Bogus Logic

The Conference Board estimates that TILMA will add $4.8 billion to British Columbia’s economy. Even if one accepts the Conference Board’s assumptions, this figure should be $2.4 billion (as explained below). However, some of these assumptions are highly questionable. The Conference Board argues, “The commercial services and wholesale and retail trade industries will benefit from [TILMA]. Increased trade liberalization will […]

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TILMA’s Bogus Math

The Government of British Columbia has finally released the Conference Board study projecting that TILMA will add $4.8 billion to the provincial economy. Seeing the study’s methodology (or lack thereof) makes this projection seem even sillier than Marc and I had suggested. The Conference Board “scored” eleven industries in seven regions on the following arbitrary scale of TILMA’s speculated impact […]

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Back-of-Envelope Math on TILMA

It seems to me that, compared to an international free-trade agreement, TILMA provides none of the potential benefits (i.e. tariff reductions) and all of the costs (i.e. regulations harmonized to the lowest common denominator and businesses suing governments). As Marc noted below, the Government of BC claims that TILMA could add $4.8 billion to provincial GDP.  A Government of Quebec […]

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TILMA’s fuzzy math

BC and Alberta signed a new agreement earlier this year to reduce interprovincial barriers to trade. The Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA) is due to go into effect in April 2007. Apparently Saskatchewan and Ontario are now considering signing on as well. While it is widely believed in business circles that there exist large barriers to trade within […]

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TILMA: A solution in search of a problem

Bilateral and multilateral trade negotiations often go hand in hand, with bilaterals able to achieve results that are more liberalizing than could be achieved on a multilateral basis. If the bilateral agreement is among two major players, however, it can be used to pressure others into signing on. The US is using this as its strategy for global trade talks, […]

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