TILMA legislation flouts rule of law, democracy: Shrybman

[Stop TILMA!]

NEWS RELEASE - May 21, 2008

TILMA legislation flouts rule of law, democracy: Shrybman
Trade law expert cites Liberal government’s Bill 32 with
constitutional violations

VICTORIA — The Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA)
between British Columbia and Alberta—and the B.C. legislation enabling
it—violate the Canadian constitution by usurping the role of judges
and endowing cabinet with too much power, says a leading trade law
expert in a legal opinion released today.

In the written opinion, Sack Goldblatt Mitchell lawyer Steven Shrybman
says that the TILMA and the BC Liberal government’s Bill 32 “confront
basic constitutional norms, including the rule of law and democracy”,
by trumping the authority of both judges and parliaments.

“By imposing financial penalties and other sanctions on the province
for the lawful actions of governments and other public bodies, TILMA
and Bill 32 improperly fetter the exercise of legislative and public
authority,” Shrybman says, in the May 7 document.

They also usurp the role of senior courts “by empowering ad hoc
tribunals to adjudicate private claims concerning the actions of
government and other public bodies.” TILMA and Bill 32 also offend
constitutional limits on the delegation of legislative power to the
executive branch of government “by amending certain provincial
statutes to accord Cabinet the discretionary power to nullify, through
regulation, the application of provisions of those laws to companies
and other entities from outside the province.”

The legal opinion was commissioned by the Canadian Union of Public
Employees.

CUPE BC president Barry O’Neill, attending a press conference today in
his capacity as CUPE National general vice president representing B.C.
and Alberta, calls Shrybman’s report “the most damning indictment yet”
of the controversial TILMA deal, which was reached in secret between
the Campbell Liberals and Alberta’s Ralph Klein government.

“Bill 32’s amendment granting the Cabinet discretionary powers to
overrule laws affecting companies from outside B.C. is one of the more
arrogant manipulations of legislation we have seen from this
government,” says O’Neill.

“This is power by proclamation, which the courts have referred to as
‘King Henry the Eighth clauses’. Does Mr. Campbell wish to be compared
to such a monarch?”