November 7, 2006

I recently sent you an article I did for the Wpg Free Press on the new corporate rights agreement called TILMA. I was waiting for an opportunity to write letters to the editor and one seems to have presented itself today in the Globe and mail. Columnist Murray Campbell has written an excellent article (see Free-trade deal -- or assault on governments?) on the agreement focusing on Ontario’s apparent eagerness to sign on.

We should use this exposure of the agreement to attack it further. For those who didn’t write a letter for the November 2 WW (arctic sovereignty) please write one today on TILMA.

Each letter should focus on the province you live in. Ontario writers can use Campbell’s article to demand that the Ontario government abandon any plans to sign on. Those of you from other provinces can also use it - the Globe is a ‘national’ newspaper after all - to warn your governments not to sign. Saskatchewan word warriors need to focus attention directly on Premier Lorne Calvert who has publicly indicated he is thinking of signing on.

ALL WRITERS SHOULD SEND COPIES THEIR LETTERS TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL AT: letters@globeandmail.ca

FRAMING: The issue of TILMA should be framed as one more corporate assault on democracy - as Ellen Gould says in the Campbell’s column "It's just a licence to kill for businesses." It is secretive (no public in put occurred in either BC or Alberta) and it actually gives residents from Alberta more power than the citizens of the BC (and vice versa) regarding public interest regulations.

The letters should serve the purpose of raising the alarm on this issue - as virtually no one has heard of this abomination. Start your letters with this theme: something along the lines of, “Do citizens of ____ know what their government is up to? Or “Citizens need to know.....”

Because this story will not have appeared in your local papers you need to write it to appeal to the newspaper’s sense of public duty to inform.

Key elements of the agreement to focus on:

[NOTE TO NEW WORD WARRIORS: It is very important to reword these points (except where there are actual quotes) so that the letters that go in don’t all look identical. It takes more time, but it is worth it terms of the likelihood of getting published. Also...you only need to use two or three of these points - pick the ones you find most compelling.]

• UNDEMOCRATIC....this agreement gives exclusive privileges to business at the expense of every other sector of society. Alberta's Minister of International and Intergovernmental Relations, Gary Mar, told the Richmond Chamber of Commerce in June 2006 that the TILMA dispute process is "everything Canadian business asked for.”

• UNDEMOCRATIC...Aside from a few exceptions, BC and Alberta will have to "mutually recognize or otherwise reconcile their existing standards and regulations". As well, they are barred, forever, from establishing "new standards or regulations that operate to restrict or impair trade, investment or labour mobility." These binding obligations lessen the value of the right to vote in each province.

• The level of government that could suffer the most is the municipal government. TILMA sets up a situation where government could be faced with endless challenges to their by-laws, from heritage designation to laws restricting the placement of billboards, to land use and zoning - any regulation that is more strict than similar regulations in any other province signing the deal.

• TILMA covers all government "entities" – Crown corporations, local governments, school boards, universities, hospitals, private agencies on
  contract with the government - and subjects their policies to potential challenges and have to pay up to $5 million in compensation.

• 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 financial 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.

• 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."
  
  [This is a powerful one - imagine every small or medium sized community having to inform all other provinces of their plans for new regulations, wait for them to comment and then to give serious consideration to those comments - a nightmare situation in terms of delays and administrative costs.]

• For all the talk about inter provincial trade barriers the promoters of this deal can’t come up with any significant examples. A study for the BC done in 1998 concluded that: "efforts to liberalize inter provincial trade will have almost no effect on trade flows. The reality is that inter provincial trade barriers are already very low."

Click here to SEND YOUR LETTER NOW!

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