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Negotiator tells SACPA TILMA not deregulation |
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Written by Gerald Gauthier
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Thursday, October 23 2008, 10:29 PM |
Albertans need not fear that local government authority or environmental and safety standards will be undermined by the B.C.-Alberta Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement, says the deal’s chief Alberta negotiator.
“This isn’t deregulation,” Shawn Robbins said Thursday at a meeting of the Southern Alberta Council on Public Affairs. “It’s more like mutual recognition.”
TILMA contains a land-use exemption that ensures municipal governments maintain their authority to determine local zoning and land-use bylaws, said Robbins, director of internal trade policy for the Alberta Ministry of International, Intergovernmental and Aboriginal relations.
Since TILMA was signed in April 2006 by the premiers of Alberta and British Columbia, he said, regulators and stakeholders from both provinces have been working out ways to recognize professional and trade credentials interprovincially and eliminate duplication of licensing and registration requirements for the trucking industry.
In some cases, more stringent levels of consumer protection are resulting under TILMA, he said. “They’re aligning their standards with Alberta’s, and in many cases, the standards are going up.”
Robbins was invited to address the council a week after it heard from Red Deer activist Ken Collier, a critic of TILMA, that the agreement would allow corporate interests to trump the concerns and priorities of municipal governments. Collier also asserted TILMA would precipitate a “race for the bottom” of standards.
The Alberta government has touted TILMA, which is to come into force fully on April 1, 2009, as an unprecedented economic union that breaks down needless barriers to trade and investment between the two provinces.
One of the benefits of TILMA, Robbins said, will be full labour mobility which will prevent artificial labour shortages which have arisen in the past. In addition, he said, more businesses will be able to bid on government contracts in either province.
“This is far from economic integration, but it is making us more compatible with one another,” he said.
Municipal government sectors in both provinces agreed, he said, to a TILMA provision that eliminates the ability of local governments to offer incentives such as free land or tax holidays to entice new business. That provision wouldn’t apply, however, in cases where B.C. or Alberta communities were competing with municipalities in Saskatchewan or other provinces and territories that aren’t party to TILMA.
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Last Updated ( Monday, August 10 2009, 2:34 PM )
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