Council of the Federation announces new deal, Activists protest PNWER Summit in Vancouver

[Stop TILMA!]

All,

A busy week. With the Council of the Federation announcing a 'new
deal' last week, and Saskachewan agreeing to sign on the the Pacific
NorthWest Economic Region, during the PNWER Summit bring held in
Vancouver July 20-24.

Resistance to the PNWER meeting has been felt in Vancouver, with a
protest on Sunday evening disrupting the opening dinner of the PNWER
Summit. The Toronto Sun ran a short video of the protest and featured
the Council of Canadians members who dressed up as 'snakes in the
grass' and highlighted corporate participation. See it at:
http://www.torontosun.ca/Video/?fr_story=fd82c9fed2a538a6e3de27e470286925485d9f48

Today a small group of activists prevented PNWER delegates from
boarding a 'luxury cruise' of the Vancouver harbour, stating, "“These
leaders have no right be on leisurely cruises. If they keep their
doors closed to us, we’ll keep our doors closed to them.”

I believe that the Vancouver Sun editorial included from Tuesday July
22 deserves some letters in response!

Carleen

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http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5jdOCaGR9cfsAF27_Py7qB9TCTY1A

Protesters demonstrate against Pacific Northwest Economic Region
Summit
July 20, 2008

VANCOUVER — A handful of protesters armed with pots and pans staged a
loud demonstration outside a political trade meeting in Vancouver
Sunday.

The Pacific Northwest Economic Region Summit brings together
politicians and business representatives from across western North
America to discuss issues like cross-border trade, long-term
sustainability and transportation for the upcoming 2010 Winter
Olympics.

The group of about 20 people waved placards and made noise outside the
posh hotel where the summit was taking place.

Rally organizer Cynthia Oka said the summit was organized in a
secretive manner with no public input for those most affected by the
policies being discussed.

"Part of our objective in having these public rallies is to raise
awareness about what's happening when these things are taking place,"
she said. "We'll try in various ways to disrupt the agenda, to protest
it, to educate other people about it."

Dressed in a florescent workers vest and a hard hat with toy snakes
wrapped around it, Joan Russow came over with a group from Victoria
called Snakes in the Grass. She said some of the groups attending the
summit weren't going to get off the hook just by showing up.

"All the major polluters are here and this is diluting the public,"
she said. "Why are they here discussing solutions to solve the
problems in the northwest?"

Matt Morrison, spokesman of the PNER said the format of the summit
will include open panels and discussions and organizers are relying on
the media to relay the outcome of the event.

"We do pride ourselves on engagement and inclusion. All parties, all
communities. We're really looking at what we can share as a community
with the region, beyond borders," he said.

He said despite the expensive registration fee, the summit was open to
anyone interested in attending.

The U.S. Ambassador to Canada David Wilkins is scheduled to address
the summit on Monday.

Delegates from Alaska, Alberta, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Saskatchewan,
Washington and Yukon were registered to take part.

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http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/editorial/story.html?id=474a8f61-b7f7-46f7-89b8-76b4dc9a3b88

Labour mobility deal will enhance competitiveness
B.C.'s Campbell and Alberta's Stelmach deserve praise for getting
other premiers to sign up
Vancouver Sun
Published: Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Canada's provincial premiers finally came to their senses last week
and reached a deal to remove barriers that have made it difficult, and
sometimes impossible, for workers from one province or territory to
work in another.

The issue is important to British Columbia, where a shortage of
350,000 workers is forecast between now and 2015. Alberta Premier Ed
Stelmach estimates that Alberta will create 400,000 jobs over the next
decade.

Labour mobility is seen as key to filling these jobs -- so important,
in fact, that Premier Gordon Gordon Campbell had threatened to go it
alone by striking bilateral agreements if his counterparts failed to
make a deal this time around.

British Columbia's Gordon Campbell forced the hand of his fellow
premiers last week to remove barriers to labour
As it turned out, he didn't have to do that because he's been
successfully pitching a national version of the British Columbia-
Alberta Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement he signed with
former Alberta premier Ralph Klein in 2006.

The national accord achieved at the Council of the Federation meeting
in Quebec City last Thursday bears a striking resemblance to TILMA in
calling for the provinces to eliminate residency requirements and
reconcile their differing occupational standards, and licensing and
registration practices, to make it easier for regulated occupations to
become certified in all provinces.

It has even adopted TILMA's $5-million penalty for non-compliance.
That will serve as a disincentive for provinces to hinder the movement
of workers as they have in the past.

Terms of the deal anticipate that the premiers will harmonize their
requirements for job credentials at their next meeting in August 2009.
We can expect exemptions. For instance, pharmacists in Alberta can
administer certain drugs and renew prescriptions, but those in other
jurisdictions are not allowed to do so. Also, paramedics would not be
able to relocate to Quebec where there is no such job classification.

But these are details of fine tuning in an agreement that's been a
long time coming. The premiers first identified labour mobility as a
priority on the interprovincial trade agenda 13 years ago.

Not only will the new deal give workers the freedom to apply their
skills and knowledge anywhere in the country, it will help foreign-
trained workers who will need just one provincial certification to
satisfy the requirements of all provinces.

B.C. and Alberta can take a bow for setting the template for the new
agreement, while premiers Campbell and Stelmach deserve a round of
applause for winning over the fractious fraternity of provincial and
territorial leaders. Their efforts will not only improve the lot of
Canadian workers but will enhance Canadian competitiveness.

Only one criticism: Why did it have to take so long?

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Sask. accepted as member of PNWER
The Leader-Post (Regina)
Tue 22 Jul 2008
Page: A5
Section: News
Byline: Angela Hall
Source: The Leader-Post

Saskatchewan's new membership in a cross-border organization will help
boost the province's trading opportunities, says Intergovernmental
Affairs Minister Bill Boyd.

Saskatchewan was announced Monday as a member of the Pacific NorthWest
Economic Region, or PNWER, during the group's annual summit in
Vancouver.

"Saskatchewan is keenly focused on maintaining and expanding our
relationships with our neighbours to the south and to the west of us,"
said Boyd, part of a Saskatchewan delegation attending the five-day
gathering.

"When we take a look at the pacific northwest and we see a region with
20 million people and over $700 billion in gross regional product,
obviously it makes sense for Saskatchewan to want to be a part of
that."

Other members of the public-private partnership include British
Columbia, Alberta, Yukon, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and
Alaska.

Alberta sponsored Saskatchewan's application to join, with membership
to cost the province an annual fee of $35,000.

But the provincial New Democrats charged that the Sask. Party
government's decision to join PNWER also moves the province closer to
membership in a controversial B.C.-Alberta trade and labour pact.

Pat Atkinson, NDP deputy leader, said PNWER "openly promotes" the
Trade and Investment Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA) concept.

"We need clarification from (Premier) Brad Wall and his party that
TILMA is not back on the public agenda," said Atkinson, who is the
only member of the Opposition attending the PNWER summit.

Boyd denied that joining PNWER is precursor to signing on to B.C and
Alberta's TILMA, with which Saskatchewan has made its concerns well-
known, he said. However, Boyd added that the government could take
look at TILMA again in the future, if Alberta and B.C. showed there
was room for movement in the agreement.

"But at this point in time our relationship is with PNWER here and
we're very excited about that," Boyd said.

Wall has in the past rejected TILMA due to concerns about its impact
on the province's Crown corporation subsidiaries, among a handful of
other outstanding issues, and has dismissed assertions that PNWER is a
back-door to joining TILMA.

The NDP's Atkinson said there also should have been more public
discussion in Saskatchewan to gauge public interest in having the
province be a part of PNWER.

PNWER president George Eskridge, a state representative in Idaho, said
he appreciated the province's "interest and aggressiveness" in getting
into the organization.

"Our interests are common. We all have the same goals in making the
northwest region as a whole a competitive factor in the global market
and Saskatchewan is going to be a fine player," Eskridge said.

The province said PNWER is also about regional collaboration on issues
of shared interest, and leveraging regional influence with federal
decision-makers in Ottawa and Washington, D.C.

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http://www.canadians.org/media/trade/2008/23-Jul-08.html

Premiers sold out to corporate pressure at Council of the Federation
meeting, says Council of Canadians

For Immediate Release: July 23, 2008

A new dispute resolution process, which Canada’s premiers agreed to
include into the Agreement on Internal Trade (AIT) at last week’s
Council of the Federation meeting, is unnecessary, anti-democratic,
and represents a capitulation to corporate interests, says the Council
of Canadians.

Last Friday, at their annual closed-door meeting in Quebec City,
premiers agreed to attach financial sanctions – fines as high as $5
million – to AIT dispute panel recommendations against government
policies deemed to be barriers to trade or investment. This private
courts model follows that laid out in the Trade, Investment and Labour
Mobility Agreement (TILMA) signed by BC and Alberta in 2006. The
dispute resolution process announced last week is also completely
unnecessary, considering that there are very few real barriers to
trade and investment between the provinces. Canada’s big business
lobby groups stood alone in continually pushing for its inclusion in
the AIT.

“The new dispute process was a gift from heaven for Canada's big
business groups because it gives them a powerful new weapon for
deregulation across the country,” says Stuart Trew, Ontario-Quebec
regional organizer with the Council of Canadians. “If a business
doesn’t like a certain environmental or public health measure that
curbs their profits, they can claim it represents a ‘barrier’ to trade
or investment and have their home province challenge local democracy
and decision making through the AIT dispute process. As an added
insult, governments can now be punished for simply doing their jobs
with fines as high as $5 million.”

In a recent legal opinion for the Canadian Union of Public Employees,
trade lawyer Steven Shrybman referred to these kinds of out-of-court
financial sanctions against government policy as unconstitutional
because they “improperly fetter the exercise of legislative and
governmental authority.”

“Already, TILMA is discouraging municipal governments from drafting
policies favouring the purchase of locally grown food for fear that
they will incur corporate challenges as ‘barriers’ to inter-provincial
trade, which is what the governments of Saskatchewan and the Yukon
were afraid of and why they decided not to sign the agreement,”
explains Carleen Pickard, B.C.-Yukon regional organizer for the
Council of Canadians. “It is completely unacceptable that the premiers
would simply adopt this unnecessary dispute process into the AIT
without any public discussion or debate. This agreement is a barrier
to democracy.”

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http://cupe.ca/NAFTA/CUPE-doesnt-want-an

No to an interprovincial NAFTA
July 18, 2008 05:05 PM

CUPE members who were waiting for clarification today on proposed
amendments to the Agreement on Internal Trade (AIT) at the Council of
the Federation press conference will, it appears, have to remain in
the dark.

Council spokesperson Premier Jean Charest assured us the amendments
are a “broad agreement”. Charest was less eager to divulge details of
the proposed tribunal mechanism which would allow corporations to sue
governments over regulations that impede revenue, thus pitting public
services against corporate profits.

Of interest was Charest’s emphasis on the governments’ need to defend
NAFTA and take responsibility for educating Canadians on the
advantages and benefits the fourteen-year-old trade agreement. Paul
Moist was quick to comment that Canadians have been extremely critical
of the impact of NAFTA on jobs and communities. “So,” says Moist, “it
is startling that our provincial leaders think that Canadians still
need to be educated about NAFTA.”

Moist and other public sector leaders are currently en route to
Colombia to meet with workers to discuss human rights’ issues and the
impact of free trade agreements on labour in both Canada and Colombia.

While the premiers remain vague about their intentions for the AIT,
one can hope the ready endorsement of NAFTA is not indicative of their
plans for internal trade in Canada.

“By empowering private businesses to sue governments, the tribunal
mechanism proposed by the premiers sets the stage for a labour
agreement that is undemocratic. Canadians don’t want NAFTA-like rules
in interprovincial trade agreements,” said Moist.

The provinces will amend the AIT by Jan. 1, 2009. From now until then,
Canada’s largest union is calling on its 570,000 members to put
pressure on governments and fight the threat of an inadequate and
irrevocable amendment to the AIT.

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