Sliding Tilma In

ECONOMIC UNITY
A TILMA for all provinces

January 15, 2009

Ed Stelmach, the Premier of Alberta, made a provocative proposal yesterday, ahead of the first ministers' conference tomorrow, to initiate a constitutional amendment to remove interprovincial trade barriers, if that is not done within a year.

While Mr. Stelmach is right that the creation of a single Canadian market would be a major economic stimulus, he would be more consistent if he were not at the same time opposing a single securities commission for Canadian capital markets.

Going beyond the labour-mobility agreement that was reached in early December, Mr. Stelmach is calling for the Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement between British Columbia and Alberta to be extended to all of Canada in the next 12 months.

He has not elaborated on what an anti-trade-barrier clause in the Constitution would say; TILMA itself is too long to serve the purpose.


A year's deadline would help focus minds, but the constitutional proposal is neither practically feasible nor theoretically necessary. If the 10 provincial governments do not manage to negotiate to bring down these barriers, the provincial legislatures would be most unlikely to do so. It is true that attention to the question would be heightened by debates on the floor of Parliament and of legislatures across the country.

In principle, the federal legislative power to regulate trade and commerce is enough to enact a TILMA equivalent in Parliament, perhaps after posing a reference question to the Supreme Court on the issue. In practice, that would be as controversial as attempting a constitutional amendment.

On investment mobility in particular, Mr. Stelmach holds back, maintaining that the "passport" system for interprovincially transferable prospectus filings has proved to be enough for a national system of capital-market regulation.

But the Hockin report released on Monday concluded that, even if fully implemented, these passports would only partly cure the regulatory fragmentation that the recent turmoil in world financial markets have revealed. Similarly, Ontario, still the leading financial centre, is of the view that a completed passport system could not provide satisfactory procedural discipline.

Even so, Mr. Stelmach, hitherto not known as a daring, visionary politician, has surpassed expectations. Ever since 1992, with the defeat of the Charlottetown accord, any thought of reopening the Constitution has aroused fear and trembling.



source