ACTION ALERT: Tell Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty to forget about TILMA

March 3, 2008

On February 21, the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario sent a letter to Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty urging him “to evaluate the considerable evidence that the [Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement] approach, as well as any effort to establish binding enforcement within the AIT, is part of a deregulatory and downward harmonization agenda that conflicts with core commitments of your government to advance democratic governance and the public good.”

TILMA was signed by the premiers of Alberta and B.C., without public consultation or legislative debate, in April 2006. The agreement allows corporations and individuals to challenge any provincial or municipal government measure they feel "restricts or impairs" their investment (i.e. their profits). Even measures designed to protect the environment and public health can be brought to an unelected NAFTA-like dispute panel with the authority to impose penalties as high as $5 million on the offending province.

Now Ontario and Quebec are in discussions to replicate TILMA as part of a new trade agreement between the two provinces, despite overwhelming evidence that the barriers to provincial trade are being overstated by corporate lobby groups and think tanks.

In their letter, Ontario nurses ask the Premier to:

Declare that Ontario will not enter into an Ontario-Quebec agreement, or any changes to the 1995 Agreement on Internal Trade, that is based on the TILMA template; that will promote deregulation and downward harmonization; and will not fully respect the policy space of governments at all levels to pursue the public good.
State that under no circumstances will Ontario enter into an agreement, inter-provincial, pan-Canadian, or international, that includes an investor-state lawsuit mechanism, or any other mechanism that empowers profits to overcome the pursuit of public interest. In particular, state that you reject the TILMA mechanism that allows business to sue governments up to a stipulated amount for measures that harm them.
Confirm that Ontario’s support for potential changes to the AIT would be contingent on the preservation of the principles just stated, and provide a clarification to the January 28 endorsement [2] you gave to the strengthening of the AIT’s dispute settlement mechanism.
Ensure that the negotiations with Quebec, as well as any other current or future interprovincial and pan-Canadian negotiations, be managed in an open and transparent way. Establish mechanisms that allow for meaningful participation of all interested sectors of the Ontario public.
Declare that any new inter-provincial or pan-Canadian agreement will be brought for deliberation and a ratification vote in the Ontario legislature.

THE DEMAND
The Council of Canadians fully supports these demands from Ontario’s nurses and encourages you to join them by sending a letter to Premier McGuinty voicing your opposition to a TILMA-like agreement with Quebec. The RNAO has a template letter on its website that you can access here.

To read more about TILMA and the Ontario-Quebec trade negotiations, visit the Council’s TILMA page here: www.canadians.org/TILMA

Stuart Trew, Researcher, Council of Canadians