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Hansen Plays 'Jeopardy,' BC Loses
Minister on TILMA: Bzzzz wrong!
Colin Hansen, Minister of Economic Development.
Now that the wheels are starting to fall off the PR bus promoting the Trade, Investment, and Labour Mobility Agreement, Colin Hansen is complaining that the agreement is getting unfair media coverage.
Minister of Economic Development Hansen attempted to set the province's media straight last month in what he called a "technical briefing." He's firing off long op-eds on TILMA to newspapers that publish letters to the editor critical of the agreement. But as Hansen struggles to explain why the government is right and critics are wrong about TILMA, you can almost hear that Jeopardy buzzer for incorrect answers go off with all the mistakes he makes on fundamental points.
Hansen does not seem to be aware of the unprecedented thing he did by signing TILMA. He committed B.C., on pain of having to pay millions of dollars in penalties, to not maintaining or introducing obstacles to investment. You only have to think about that for a moment to realize why other investment agreements like NAFTA do not go that far. Pretty much anything a government does -- from restricting private investment in public health to preventing urban sprawl -- can be seen as an obstacle to investment.
Hansen would have us believe that TILMA's "no obstacles to investment" clause is not a big deal because it was already written into Canada's existing Agreement on Internal Trade. A quick look at the Agreement on Internal Trade shows it does NOT say there can be no obstacles to investment. Can Hansen really be that ill-informed on such a critical point?
Weird rulings
Having claimed that TILMA will somehow attract billions of new investment dollars to B.C., Hansen is now downplaying its investment provisions, saying the agreement only applies to "border measures." Supposedly regulations applied within the province are safe. But what "border measures" are in place to stop the flow of investment from Alberta and B.C.? Does B.C. have a secret Investment Review Agency, where it turns down Albertans' investment? Albertans already invest widely in B.C, as anyone living in areas of the province with a real estate boom knows.
What TILMA in fact does is allow challenges to provincial regulations, programmes, or policies if these "restrict or impair" an investment.
A senior official in Canada's trade department, Allison Young, has explained that the business of trade negotiation "no longer deals solely with 'at the border issues' such as tariff reduction but is now grappling with 'behind the border' domestic regulatory concerns." The reach of these agreements into areas previously considered purely domestic is one reason why governments are now being hit by loss after loss of their regulatory authority at the hands of trade panels.
Some examples of these losses? At the WTO, a panel has ruled against Europe for delaying approval of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Under investment agreements, a panel has ruled against Mexico and required it pay millions in compensation for having declared an area an ecological reserve. Another dispute panel ruled against Chile for letting local zoning bylaws block a foreign company's housing development on agricultural land.
Canada is currently being challenged under NAFTA because of its restrictions on Lindane, a pesticide banned in 50 countries, and also because the Ontario government turned down development of a waste dump.
The special risk posed by TILMA is that it goes further than any other agreement in providing grounds for investors' complaints against these kinds of regulatory decisions.
America's reach
Hansen is trying to assure local governments their bylaws are protected from challenges under TILMA's "no obstacles to investment" rule as long as they treat B.C. and Alberta investors the same. But that's not what the article says, and dispute panels are barred from reading into an agreement words that are not there. And when asked whether B.C. and Alberta would issue a binding interpretation that only discrimination could be challenged under this TILMA article, Hansen threw cold water on the idea. He said that TILMA's no obstacles rule "serves us well."
TILMA does impose -- in a separate article -- a requirement that investors from across the border be given the best treatment afforded local investors. Hansen seems blissfully unaware just how much risk governments face under this requirement not to "discriminate." If a company can prove to the satisfaction of a panel that its product is "like" one produced by a local company, it can demand the same treatment. Trade law is littered with bizarre panel rulings on this point, such as bedroom slippers should be considered "like" outdoor shoes.
It would be funny if these rulings did not have real effects. Canada lost a NAFTA case and had to pay compensation to an American company because a panel ruled that shipping toxic PCBs across the border to be processed in the U.S. was "like" having them handled in Canada. The panel said NAFTA's non-discrimination rules meant Canada had to treat the American company, wanting to do the work outside Canada, the same as companies located in Canada. So a TILMA panel could rule the B.C. government had to treat work done in Alberta the same as work done in B.C.
UPS, the American courier company, is currently challenging Canada under NAFTA saying that its private, for-profit services are like the ones offered by Canada Post and should be given the same treatment by the Canadian government. The UPS case illustrates how the non-discrimination rules in NAFTA and TILMA can be used to challenge public services.
'Subject to attack'
In his assessment of TILMA, UBC Professor of Economics John Helliwell (a recognized expert in internal trade matters) has concluded:
"In general, the combination of unrestricted access to the dispute mechanisms combined with a commitment to neutrality of treatment would make almost any provincial or municipal programme subject to attack."
But Hansen is now trying to entice local governments to allow the agreement to be extended to them by 2009 -- sort of a Final Jeopardy round where the opportunities for private investors to launch TILMA challenges would expand exponentially. Hansen is claiming that the B.C. and Alberta governments direct and control TILMA dispute panels -- even though the independence of TILMA panels and the binding character of their decisions was supposed to be the agreement's major improvement over the Agreement on Internal Trade.
Hansen told journalists in his April 26 media briefing:
"There is also a provision -- it's in Article 33 [actually Article 34] -- that says any time the two governments can actually issue an interpretation and this is unlike other agreements in that if we for example saw that a particular panel was going down a wrong track, pursuing an objective that wasn't consistent with what TILMA was meant to accomplish, then we could actually issue an interpretation that would be binding on the panels."
So there goes that wrong answer buzzer again. TILMA is in fact not unlike other agreements in this regard -- NAFTA also says that its signatories can issue joint interpretations binding on dispute panels. But in all but one case this provision has not shielded governments from negative panel rulings.
Too bad TILMA is not just a game like Jeopardy, where the minister's wrong answers would be embarrassing but wouldn't put the public interest at risk.
Related Tyee stories:
- Trade Debate Libs Don't Want
Talk of TILMA deal censored in the leg. But not here. - 'Very Big Teeth' Threaten Campbell's Green Ambitions
TILMA trade agreement would penalize his plans. - Corporate Rights Deal to Make Us April Fools
TILMA will strip our ability to set local limits.
![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
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- Who Mowed Down the Premier?
- Canada's Economy, Deconstructed (by a 12 year-old)
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59
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biscotti
5 years ago
NAFTA's Chapter 11
I've only met about six people in the last few years who have heard of the UPS challenge to Canada Post. Even post office folks. This tells me how much the mainstream media have suppressed this story, and I'm glad Murray Dobbin is continuing to expose what's going on with these corporate charters of rights.
Sometimes I wonder if a company like UPS could continue to carry on business in another country (other than Canada) while challenging that country's public services. At the very least, a boycott of UPS courier services and stores is in order here.
G West
5 years ago
Good Idea Biscotti
Boycott Brown.
Boycott UPS
zalm
5 years ago
CCPA...
...makes the case even more cogently than Dobbin.
Within the federal system, provinces have very important powers to exercise on behalf of their citizens. TILMA constrains those powers by making commercial interests the paramount consideration in policy making. TILMA coerces governments to disregard demands for higher standards even if these are expressed by the majority of citizens. The agreement restricts the objectives that governments can pursue, and limits the means that can be used to achieve objectives. This erases not only borders, but also the powers of government.
http://policyalternatives.ca/documents/BC_Office_Pubs/bc_2007/bc_ab_tilma_summary.pdf
And don't you right-wing nutbars accuse me of favour bigger government! TILMA could legitimately erase all the precepts that even famous utilitarians such as Jeremy Bentham found dear - that government should only control that which absolutely cannot be controlled by private interests, such as societal and national security, rule of law, control of the money supply and equal rights for all.
The government we have is plenty big enough. It's merely too focussed on corporate interests - what with $76 billion each year given federally in business subsidies of one kind or another, and at least $7 billion provincially to corporations like the forest industry, the mining industry, and BC Hydro/WK Power, to name only a few.
Any big business, whether Canadian or foreign, has the right to come in and determine if it can serve Canadians' needs. If it can, either through lower price, local resourcing, increased safety, or some combination of the three, then it wins the contract. If it can't, why give it a leg up by, as TILMA says "removing barriers to disinvestment, such as regulation". If a toxin such as MTBE isn't good enough for the people in its home country, why the hell is it good enough for Canadians?
If truly you think we as Canadians shouldn't have any right to say what's appropriate for our own country, in terms of health and safety, local interest, or methods of doing business, then fascist is the best word for you. And you can look up the definition of that one on your own.
zalm
5 years ago
You know where this whole shitteroo...
...got started? With the price of beer in 1979-80. Remember the beer strike of 1980? I was toiling on the greenchain at Fraser Mills that summer when the strike took away the reason for tailgate parties for five weeks. The price of my Old Heidelberg - a premium beer at the time - was at $5.55 a case, or somewhat under twice the minimum wage of $3.00 an hour.
The pols of the day on both sides - Alex McDonald, Sam Bawlf, Jim Nielsen etc. protested the tax increases of the Liquor Branch, but ultimately said "the problem isn't the tax on beer, it's the interprovincial trade barriers that prevent the free passage of beer across provincial lines, and the necessity of breweries to set up individual (and ostensibly less efficient) bottling lines in each province"
Go ahead. Look it up in Hansard - it's still there.
So over the years, the interprovincial trade barriers have been abolished, plants closed, breweries rationalized or bought out, competition eliminated, and now the average price of brew is $20.25 a case, or about 2 1/2 times the minimum wage. If you're not getting the "six suckin' bux" that is - then its more than 3 1/2 times.
So much for the raison d'être for TILMA. TILMA is just a grab for corporate profits, and I'm not normally one to fling words like that around. It's 100% bullshit and Hansen should be hanging his head in shame.
realisticman
5 years ago
Support UPS!
Earlier this week Andrew Coyne wrote about the Canada Post monopoly game:; "...many other countries in Europe and elsewhere achieve comparable ratios for overnight delivery. Not coincidentally, these tend to be the same countries where the post office monopoly has been broken. Finland and Sweden have had competitive mail services since the early 1990s; Britain and New Zealand have since followed, while Germany and the Netherlands, already substantially liberalized, move to complete deregulation next year.
The results have been striking. In New Zealand, a recent study for the C. D. Howe Institute reports, “the proportion of letters delivered the next day has increased from 88 percent in 1988 to 97 per cent currently.” The privatized Dutch and German post offices have become world leaders in their field, expanding into other markets and providing competition for local providers..."
Why would anyone want to retain poor service and keep a monopoly?
G West
5 years ago
Apples and Oranges and UPS
Again, R/Man, you display your ignorance of the vastness of this country. New Zealand, Britain, Germany and the Netherlands combined wouldn't fill half of our largest provinces.
Canada Post had better service three decades ago than it does now and UPS is useless at delivering anything in non-urban environments.
The privatization of postal outlets, the absence of real professional management and the lack of commitment to the idea of good service by the Government that has wrecked the postal service in this country at the same time that costs have risen out of all reason for non-letter mail.
Neither you nor Andrew Coyne has a point. You really DON'T know much about this country do you? When did you immigrate here from wherever?
deeby
5 years ago
Um, that's Minister of Economic Development....
C'Mon Dobbin, and Tyee editors, get the man's portfolio right!!
THANKS FOR THE HEADS UP. FIXED NOW. TYEE EDITOR
realisticman
5 years ago
I beg your pardon
West;
When did you immigrate here from wherever?
Isn't that a bit impertinent? Are you suggesting that I'm not a real Canadian? Sounds a bit like some people back east, eh?
I must confess, I've never been to P.E.I., Nunavut, the N.W.T or the Yukon but I have been to all the other provinces.
Westie, have you ever been to Canada Post HQ? The executive offices at the top of the Ottawa building are accessed via a dedicated elevator. Luncheons are served as in Trump HQ. Linen, many wines to chose from, a full gourmet spread like a good brunch at the Ritz.
I don't think you should be afraid of a bit of competition for Canada Post; especially if, as you say, UPS are so pathetically inefficient. They won't have a prayer, eh?
Working Man
5 years ago
Ideaology
We have to face the reality that the left is going to automatically oppose any kind of treaty that is designed or intended to increase trade. Trade is what makes nations rich but for some reason, the left is mired in merchantilism. The odd thing is that Ken Gerogetti, who doggedly campaigned against NAFTA, now says it was a good thing for Canada.
Change is not always a bad thing and something to be feared, unless you are a socialist, who are in fact the most conservative people in the world.
realisticman
5 years ago
And Very Conservative Mercantilists
Many socialists here not only want high tariffs on imports they also want to restrict exports!
G West
5 years ago
It was meant to be
Anyone who suggests that mail service for the whole of this vast country is within the mandate of a profit-driven culture like UPS to deliver doesn't know very much about this country or about corporate culture.
You probably think the banks are servicing the needs of non-urban Canadians adequately too.
I do know what a mess a bunch of managers from the military - many of them from outside the country - have made of Canada Post.
You made a silly and impertinent suggestion and I responded in kind - the same sort of response I use to react to people like Andrew Coyne when they write like silly buggers.
You might want to read what I actually wrote about Canada Post - ie. relative to its management and the state it's in today; I'd say the same thing about their corporate vision and culture as well.
None of which negates the point that Canada Post ought to be able to use whatever profits it can generate in the cities in order to provide service to the many areas in this vast country you obviously KNOW NOTHING about. UPS and other courier services don't care a fig for anything but profits - and it shows.
All 'real' Canadians should boycott them. Great Britain isn't the only place on earth with traditions worthy of conservation and protection.
When did you immigrate to Canada?
jazz
5 years ago
hey working man...
I guess I'm a leftie because I want to restrict, or at least oppose - the transfer of wealth from the poor and the middle class to the rich.
Here's a question for the Tyee readers:
Can you be poor or middle class and still be right wing?
Good article Murray. Many thanks for your work.
G West
5 years ago
Mercantilism -that's Mercantilism - working man
Well, we ought to know a fair bit about mercantilism here in Canada all right Working Man. That's exactly the colonial mentality that built this country and still preserves it as a source of wealth for foreigners and a curse for the 80% of Canadian families who are losing out while the rich get richer on the backs of commodity sales being used for foreign manufacturing to keep ‘their’ wage slaves in thrall to modern industrial manufacturing and the naïve dream of upward mobility. At the same time as the vast majority of their countrymen (both India and China – Tom Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, notwithstanding) are much worse off and less healthy than they were 20 years ago
I have no problem with exports - I do have a problem with giving our resources away and paying profits to foreign investors who use Canadian financial resources to buy out our common heritage - strip it clean and then walk away.
Under the system you love the only winners are the people who set up the tax system and continue to reward elites disproportionately to their contribution and effort. People like Peter Munk and Barrick who are now performing their mercantilist con job in poor countries around the world.
The fact that the odd working class guy like you manages to get a golden shower now and again when they sell out is simply the exception that proves the rule.
Most of our culture's economic victims are like realisticman's friends who can't afford to live in the places where they have to work 60 - 80 hours a week to keep their heads above water while they hope for a big break.
I've seen lots of change in the last 25 years Working Man - very little of it good and it's creating a much more hidebound, selfish and stratified society than we had even a generation ago. Shameful.
Even UBC, having neglected the business it should have been in for market flim-flam over the past decade, is now in serious trouble. I notice there aren't so many folks trumpeting Martha Piper's praises at Pt Grey these days.
Bring on the recession. It's the only way the majority of citizens are going to be able to wrest control of this economy back from the corporate pirates who are robbing it blind.
realisticman
5 years ago
Good News
Interest rates are going up. Residential prices will come down but industry will resist expenditures for modernizing and commodities exports might slow down. Government coffers will deplete from less business activity and social expenditures will have to be curtailed.
Happy now.
G West
5 years ago
Oh it has to go a lot further than that
The essential first step is tax reform. Get the huge piles of money out of the hands of the folks who've done nothing productive to earn it; get the media out of the hands of people who don't tell the truth and lie to support their vision of progress - which isn't progress at all. Reward real innovation and true productivity and tax corporate criminals out of business. Corporation law also must be overhauled and reformed.
We are living in a time whose closest parallel is the gilded age and with luck we'll survive without the kind of violence and the crash that ended that madness.
I'm not betting on it. The fact so many Canadians seem to be willing to swallow this codswallop is not in any way encouraging.
And if we continue to pretend that neo-liberal politics and market driven economics will get us out of this mess - a mess business and corporate malfeasance, theft, lies, conversion, greed and selfishness have created, then there is no hope for any of us.
Like Easter Islanders fighting over vanishing resources and our 'version' of god, we will wipe each other out.
Not Happy at all. Given the leadership offered at both Federal and Provincial levels in this country there is very little to be happy about. I think the most depressing thing of all is the sanguinary attitude that so many of my countrymen and women, who should be at the forefront of the movement for reform and change, effect these days.
That is truly depressing. Have another lollipop.
BC Dude
5 years ago
Realisticman and WM you are
Realisticman and WM you are not real Canadians, as you would be against this treasonous bunch of criminals the BC fibs and bush-as_-wipe-harper!
Canada will survive as the rats are starting to chicken out because of fear for themselves.
TILMA = treason to all British Columbians and Albertans!
T the I illegal M movement from Democracy A And the unscrupulous theft of the peoples choice over corporate shareholder greed!
BC Dude
5 years ago
Come on Canadians it's
Come on Canadians it's time!
Show some of the grit that gave Canada high marks in the world WE CAN AND MUST GET THIS RESPECT BACK AS THE WORLDS PEACE KEEPERS!
We are 32 million strong to their very few greedy vermin!
BOYCOTT all big biz, now, today, don't buy anything, notta
Kick the Harper Cons, P Martin Liberals warmongers out forever along with big biz as they need us more than we need them!
Boycott Shell and ESSO as they are EXXON
Just look at the BC Rail/BC Legislature scandal, gordo's DUI?
G West
5 years ago
Naw Dude
They are real Canadians; that's the problem.
Neither Working Man nor Realisticman are bad guys. In my view the fact they even bother to show up here is a positive thing. The people you really have to worry about don't read Tyee. The people you really have to worry about are the folks in Harper's and Campbell's squad of hired hit-men and women who spend their working days and nights dreaming up ways to short-circuit discussion and debate.
People like the authors of that Federal manual for Conservative committee heads and folks in Gordon's awful little Bureau of Public Affairs.
Ministry of Truth would be more appropriate.
It takes work to understand what sits in plain view in front of our noses and most people are too busy, tired and stressed to make the necessary connections.
Bytesmiths
5 years ago
Yea, Murray!
Murray Dobbin almost alone in providing press coverage of this nasty agreement.
I am in Canada due to Oregon's Measure 37, while ostensibly about property owners' rights, actually shares a lot with TILMA. It says that if a regulation reduces someone's property value, the jurisdiction must either waive the regulation or compensate the property owner for their "lost value". In all the thousands of cases brought in the two years that M37 has been in effect, not one government has chosen to compensate; they all waive the regulation in question. In short, land use planning in Oregon has been totally gutted. This includes things like pig farms in the middle of suburbs!
So I left, having moved to Oregon in the first place because of the strong land use planning. Now I find Measure 37 on steroids has followed me north.
Please take the Oregon example as what could happen here. Contact your MLA and tell them you want TILMA subject to full public hearings and proper legislative review.
silvervalley
5 years ago
TILMA, SPP & NAFTA superhighway
Thanks for your efforts on this topic, Murray. Our organization just sponsored a debate with renowned trade expert, Ellen Gould, and a chap from the Fraser Institute. I almost felt sorry for Fraserinstituteguy as he floundered to reply to questions he clearly didn't know the answers to, and had to resort to merely repeating platitudes from Colin Hansen's website.
What really shocks me about TILMA is the way it dovetails with the Security and Prosperity Partnership, another stealth-mode agreement leading to the unlegislated, undebated North American Union. The CEOs of the biggest companies in Canada, the US and Mexico are undermining the sovereignty of all three nations, while most of us are dozing in front of the TV.
The NAFTA superhighway, 1/4 mile wide, from Mexico to Winnipeg, with a leg over to the western terminal of Gateway's Deltaport, has already begun. Soon massive car, truck, train, and pipeline traffic--including oil and water--will send our resources south, and cheaply made containerized goods north. UPS should be delighted. (BTW I have had very good experiences with Canada Post and a very bad experience with UPS. I don't see why they cannot do their thing and let Canada Post do theirs.)
Unbeknownst to nearly everyone I have talked to, the biggest corporations, with the aid of our elected representatives, are attempting an end run around our sovereignty. I hope that by the time most of us awake to what is being perpetrated upon us, it will not be too late. I wonder if the Queen knows what is going on?
Bailey
5 years ago
I had a dream
It was a pickup truck. An old beater of a Fargo. It had a piperack over the cab and a swivel where the tailgate ought to be. When you stood the swivel up off the rack and clicked it up, Voila!
Mme. Guillotine appears.
In my dream it was parked outside the Legislature during some kind of protest or other. It was never used or anything, just there, in the parking lot standing up and saying nothing much while people milled about and the legislature was in session.
I don't know why I would dream such a silly thing. It was probably something I ate. I shouldn't eat cake after it gets so late.
Frank
5 years ago
Mr Dobbin
Good article Murray, glad to see you're back in the saddle doing what you do best. Much more focused and informative than your article on Harper.
U'm all for free trade between the provinces and recognition of credentials etc. But as Bytesmiths points out, that isn't all that this deal is concerned with. Perhaps the question that needs to be asked is what is the problem that TILMA fixes?
The answer is that the Liberals are implementing ideology and doing everything they can to mask or sugar-coat it.
Which is par for the course for this group.
BC Dude
5 years ago
http://media.workingtv.com/ar
http://media.workingtv.com/archives/2007_mar12_633092876667968750/?media=wm&archiveID=1&startTime=770
BC Dude
5 years ago
silvervalley I believe the
silvervalley I believe the Royal Family are a big part of the problem as I understand they are known as "The Firm" in certain unsavory (skull and Bones, Illuminati, Bilderbergs) circles check it out.
BC Dude
5 years ago
Isn't Collins one of the
EDITED FOR LEGAL CONCERNS. MR. COLLINS IS NOT UNDER INVESTIGATION IN CONNECTION WITH THE BASI-VIRK TRIAL, ACCORDING TO THE RCMP. TYEE EDITOR
SharingIsGood
5 years ago
Bailey's dream
Thanks for sharing, Bailey, now I am dreaming too and smiling - about the French Revolution, of course! wink wink.
DJT
5 years ago
Wrong Collins, BC Duce
You are confusing Gary Collins (ex Minister of Finance) with Colin Hansen, Minister of Economic Development. Whether or not he should still be allowed to be in "power", however, is another argument altogether.
realisticman
5 years ago
Qui moi?
G West:
***
BC Dude
***
Charming quotes, aren't they?
Isn't it fascinating to see a debate about trading practices quickly escalate into this type of ethnocentric bigotry. A prejudice of superiority. Exclusionism based on a differing of opinion. Interrogation and accusation on a web-blog. I haven't studied nationalism deeply but this is surely how it starts.
dolphin
5 years ago
Any benefits?
Are there any examples of how this provision could benefit us? For example, teachers now have 10 years of seniority portability when they move districts in BC--if that were applied to those moving between BC and Alberta that would certainly be a boon (probably to BC receiving more experienced teachers than vice versa). The downside is that Alberta's College of Teachers has lower standards for credentialing which TILMA would oblige BC to recognize equally. I'd like to see a more indepth analysis of this agreement.
Working Man
5 years ago
The Sky is Falling
Sure looks like sky is falling. Again.
Working Man
5 years ago
Don't Wish too hard
Do a little research and you will find the French Revolution ended up with the desctruction and death of all the "revolutionaries" who started it to beging with, caused a murderous dictator to take power and caused so many deaths France's population has never recovered.
What a bunch of twaddle, especially since Carole James couldn't beat a blind basset hound in an election.
G West
5 years ago
Working Man
Interesting that you didn't refer to this, isn't it?
From G West:
So much simpler to just throw mud at socialists, leftists, and 'real' liberals, isn't it?
G West
5 years ago
Your education with respect to both
Your education with respect to both the French Revolution and Napoleon is sadly lacking, I'm afraid.
Neither were panaceas, of course, but your assessment is a long way from the truth as well.
BC Dude
5 years ago
DJT 12hrs ago yes you are
DJT 12hrs ago yes you are right I did have the two mixed up, thank you!
I'm just very upset with the "Dirty Tricks" that are being played out by our elected dishonorable BC cabal dictated to by a traitor of British Columbians and especialy the BCRail delays.
Campbell would have never been re-elected if the BC Rail case was started before 2005 election!
We would have never worried about BCR, BC Hydro, BC Ferries, BC Gas and electric, Barrick mines, 713 missing kids, FOI stalled, etc
I would think any sane, lawful politician would bust their butts to make BC and Canada a Strong, Peaceful Nation respected around the world!
TILMA
The closer we get to the yanks the more we are asked/told to give up that which has made Canada a great and respected country!
If this is ranting then so be it!
BC Dude
5 years ago
This is for all the
This is for all the "sheepal" Liberal MLA's!
“Justice is a conscience, not a personal conscience but conscience of the whole of the humanity.
Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of Justice.”
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
A great insiteful read.
http://www.vivelecanada.ca/article.php/20070512220321604
Working Man
5 years ago
Lives Needed
You two really need to get lives. I'm off to the park with my son.
G West
5 years ago
Just don't try teaching him history
Or politics. Stick to construction, he'll be okay.
I notice a common thread when dealing with folks like Working Man, when faced with the contradictions and inconsistencies in their arguments the response almost always involves resorting to an ad hominem remark: Even when someone pays him a compliment.
Strange.
Geoff
5 years ago
Hey Folks
Attempting to denigrate someone's opinion by accusing them of being an immigrant or not being "real Canadians" does nothing to advance the discussion. Please stay focused on the arguments.
Thanks,
Geoff.
G West
5 years ago
Geoff
That comment related to a statement the person (Realisticman) with whom I was having a discussion about the competitiveness of Canada Post and a false analogy he drew with respect to postal services in Europe.
He clearly doesn't appreciate the costs and difficulties involved in providing postal services in this country (outside urban areas) and it was in that context that the question was asked.
It was a perfectly valid comment where and when it was made on another story. Having been lifted by working man and used here in an entirely different context – along with his usual ad hominem style it certainly doesn't belong here. [Check the mining story comments if you care to explore the details.]
As I observed in my comment above addressed to working man.
I certainly would appreciate it if you pointed out to working man that this:
Lives Needed
Working Man
4 hours ago
You two really need to get lives. I'm off to the park with my son.
certainly doesn’t meet the posting rules relative to personal remarks.
sdgreen
5 years ago
Anti Free Enterprise
Well one thing is for certain, Dobbin is totally against 'free enterprise'.
The sooner we get commonality across Canada, the better we will be on the economic side of things.
However, Dobbin is paranoid since that will destroy the anti-business attitudes of his socialist union buddies.
TILMA is good for BC/Alberta as opportunities for employment in both directions will be enhanced, by removing a lot of red tape.
Frank
5 years ago
sdgreen
As usual sdgreen, your point of view suggests there is nothing to be gained by doing anything in the world that would impede economic development.
Just once I would enjoy seeing you question the ideology of developing and selling everything in our society that we can.
Is there one single thing that you wouldn't sell for the right price?
Frank
5 years ago
Postal services
Sounds like UPS can't compete with Canada Post on the same playing field that was here when they moved here. So instead of making themselves more competitive they instead sue.
As for mail delivery in Sweden and Britain, I'm sure Canada Post could deliver mail across the country in a single day too if the country was only the size of Vancouver Island.
Bailey
5 years ago
The French Revolution
Revolutions of course are always betrayed. It seems to be one of their defining characteristics. The French one was no exception.
The thing about it is that their conclusion was valid: as long as the elite were alive nobody else could be safe. The elites were both ruthless and rich enough to buy their way out of any trouble it might lead to.
The fallacy was that once anybody acted on that conclusion by executing the sociopathic elites who were looting the countryside, those revolutionaries automatically became psychopathic and had by the same logic made themselves elegible for the chop.
You can make a revolution, but not for yourselves. To make a revolution is an act of absolute self sacrifice. If you are successful, then you yourself must in the end be eliminated for the same reasons as the traitors you defeated.
If this essential last step isn't taken, that is a betrayal of the revolution, and it fails. Sort of.
Hardly anybody has the courage to throw himself to Mme. Guillotine for his social ideals, and nobody else can, since that then disqualifies THEM, and so on and on and on forever.
However, once the sociopaths are thinned out enough, the corrupt structures and companies they use to enslave the peasants break down, and whatever government grows out of the revolution has a chance to build new structures that aren't corrupt.
For a while, anyway. If they can resist the temptations of all that cash.
Frank
5 years ago
The "murderous dictator"
Uh-huh. Glad to see there's so much sympathy for the Bourbons out there among the hoi poloi. For what its worth, those who you jump to defend wouldn't have thought much of any of us.
The thing is, outside of the personalities congregated at the Congress of Vienna few would dismiss Napoleon as a murderous dictator. The French, whose population was supposedly so decimated that they have yet to recover, a theory I've never seen put forward by any serious historian, seem to in fact idolize the guy.
Guess they don't care how many Germans, Poles and Italians ol' Bonny lost in Russia.
And what were the consequences of the Bourbon Restoration? Well, in their long time-out they "learned nothing and forgot nothing" and were once again kicked out of their fancy palaces. Never to return. And who did the French people replace them with? Why, the nephew of the so-called murderous dictator. How about that.
BC Dude
5 years ago
As I've said before these BC
As I've said before these BC Libs are traitors and as such should all be tried on these grievous charges! The grand theft and criminal giveaway of Our Publicly Owned Corporations and our future economy to foreign corporations. Follow the money or see where these public (fleas, live on the blood of their hosts, US) go to after public office?
Ah, TILMA showing cracks!
Another Canuck soldier KIA for Freedom and Democracy?
BC Dude
5 years ago
www.vivelecanada.ca/article.p
http://www.vivelecanada.ca/article.php/20070512220321604
realisticman
5 years ago
maudit immigrant
Since you ask, GWest;
and you also suggest your reason for this interesting and revealing question is;
Like one or two people I haven't given serious deliberations to the logistics and finances of domestic postal services but I frequently marvel at the service and even pointedly greet my delivery-person in an act of purposeful esprit de corps to consummate the phenomenon.
Over thirty years of adult life I have traveled across Canada by land from New Brunswick to Tofino, by rail through the west and in the air across the country at least fifty times, including stays in St. Johns and Halifax, as well as a few places in the north - both inter-urban and inter-rural.
Will I ever be a full-member or always be a hyphenated Canadian?
G West
5 years ago
Well, since you ask
When you post comments such as this one:
It's hardly surprising that someone like me would question your understanding of the difficulties and logistics involved in providing decent postal services to EVERYONE who lives in this huge sparsely populated country and not just to people who live in urban areas. You’ll remember an earlier discussion that involved your apparent lack of understanding of the conditions on the majority of non-urban Indian Reservations in this country where you also displayed an amazing lack of understanding and sensitivity to the Canadian reality.
However, don't fret, that kind of thinking is rapidly ruining what was once a very good postal service. If you haven't given serious thought to what you are saying then you must be saying it because you are ignorant or uninformed of the actual circumstances and background of the matter you're discussing. You write decently and you’re clearly not stupid – as I’ve acknowledged more than once.
Why would it be a problem for me to point out that someone of your obvious intelligence must not have the necessary experience to have made such a claim?
My attitude toward immigrants is extremely welcoming. The one thing I do insist on is that they understand 'my' country a little better before they try to tell me how it should be run.
I wouldn't go to England and tell a Londoner that their approach to keeping cars out of central London was foolish.
You're obviously an immigrant, I suspect from Great Britain, and I'm happy to have you here. However, when you suggest that you, or Andrew Coyne for that matter (for whose silliness there is even less excuse) understand the dynamics of a country as big and difficult to manage as this just because you've done a little travelling - well, I'm afraid there's a bit more to it than that.
Have a nice day. Moreover, try to cut down on the air travel; it's bad for the environment.
realisticman
5 years ago
Neos
Madelaine Drohan has a perspective.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/viewpoint/vp_drohan/20060803.html
I wonder how she feels about Bertie Ahern winning a third turn.
Seems that there are many reasons for Ireland's success. I like this quote from the BBC, "...they include government policy, such as keeping corporation tax low compared to the rest of the EU; a flexible, well-educated, English-speaking workforce; and an entrepreneurial spirit...", Interesting to see that EU transfers have declined to the point where they look to be going the other way soon.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6646629.stm
G West
5 years ago
How be we also consider
Might I be so bold as to suggest that you also consider the millions (no tens of millions) of Diaspora Irish who had to leave the "Emerald Isle" for a chance at survival?
Let's count in the thousands who died on Partridge Island and at Grosse Ile as well before we declare there's any kind of an 'Irish' miracle to discuss.
Let's imagine plunking all those dead folks and their relatives back in today's Ireland and see how 'wonderful' things are.
Depopulate a place sufficiently through neglect, starvation and deliberate British government policy, send about 2 million to Canada and probably 5 or 6 times that number to the US and eventually things will improve back home. This nonsense about the IRISH miracle or the Irish Tiger is just another example of facile neo con special pleading – not very different from the nonsensical spin of the 185 doctors in the Bureau of Public Affairs who enable purblind dissemblers like Colin Hansen whose ignorance is so ably illustrated in Murray's article.
Orwell couldn’t have come up with a better name for this pathology.
Two of my female ancestors lost both their parents and a sibling on the way over in the 1840s - please don't tell me about Irish miracles. The story of that island is a nightmare, not a miracle.
Bertie Ahern to the contrary; now there's a perspective for you.
Still, I am heartened by the fact that you have finally acknowledged, at long last, the role played by EU loans and aid in Ireland's current success.
Maybe we are making progress.
Kumakun
5 years ago
TILMA just another secret trade agreement
What is most objectionable to TILMA and many other trade agreements is the appearance of being undemocratic. This is not to say that every trade agreement out there is bad. As one example cited, if the cost of mail delivery is cheaper with a private company, what's the problem?
What is a problem is when private interests use trade agreements to subvert decisions made on local levels arrived at by a representative democratic process. I find it hard to swallow decisions made by trade panels by appointed officials who are too far removed from the democratic pocess to ever be held to account.
Why are the BC Liberals so willing to make their job of running the province more difficult? Make it easier for private interests to challenge government decisions? If this government believes in itself, why not try to achieve what they believe are the important aspects of TILMA through legislation? They would not have to give up anything they didn't want to but could encourage all kinds of healthy trade and investment between provinces and have the best of both worlds.
The answer is: The BC Liberals base all of there decisions on ideology and nothing else. They are ideologically neo-liberal in their approach and that is what shapes every decison they make, not matter how illogical and stupid that decison may turn out to be.
Dave A
5 years ago
Quote:Now that the wheels
BC Dude
5 years ago
TILMA is just a coward’s
TILMA is just a coward’s way of screwing the people!
All of Gordo's dirty deeds done while Premier should be null and void including all of his appointments! Clean the whole lot of them out with no benefits or golden severance packages except jail!
Get the criminal out! Stonewally
BC Dude
5 years ago
a person gets a ticket for
a person gets a ticket for J-walking, or 10 months in prison for stopping big highway corporation bullies. Laws "contempt of court" to protect corporations. Is this the start of TILMA?
freebear
5 years ago
Ironic when....
Silvervalley noted earlier:
"Unbeknownst to nearly everyone I have talked to, the biggest corporations, with the aid of our elected representatives, are attempting an end run around our sovereignty. I hope that by the time most of us awake to what is being perpetrated upon us, it will not be too late. I wonder if the Queen knows what is going on?
Funny, when it is a country that actually grants corporate citizenship!
And a country can withdraw that corporate citizenship too!
If the politicos had any stones!
BC Dude
5 years ago
Hear hear freebear a very
Hear hear freebear a very good idea whose time has come!
As you say the only way to get this TILMA DeLegislated is to get rid of (Recall) as many of the MLA's before it's too late. I'm not a politician but if I were I'd be ashamed of myself for being a coward to assimilate with the likes of G Campbell!
There is only one ex-liberal who I am proud to call a real British Columbian "For The People By The People" and that’s exdeputy minister Penny Bellem!
http://www.publiceyeonline.com/archives/001276.html
BC Dude
5 years ago
Lib's "Dirty Tricks" = KPMG
Lib's "Dirty Tricks" = KPMG
http://sec.gov/news/press/2005-94.htm
http://www.fathers.ca/bc_liberal's_us_terrorist_collection_group.htm
http://www.straight.com/article/think-vancouver-convention-centre-ii-boon-or-boondoggle
http://www.nupge.ca/privatization/privatization.htm
http://www.leg.bc.ca/hansard/hansindx/38th3rd/2007-membrk.htm
BC Dude
5 years ago
This is Gordo's answer to
This is Gordo's answer to investigating?
http://www.answers.com/topic/kpmg-tax-shelter-fraud
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/04/24/business/KPMG.php
Sjelle
5 years ago
Hanson vs. TILMA itself
I agree the wheels of the TILMA PR bus are starting to fall off. I've read a number of Mr. Hanson's letters and I wonder what carries more weight the signed agreement itself or a desperate minister's letter to the editor trying to put out a brush fire somewhere? I think the Council of Canadians said it best: "The greatest strength of the case against TILMA is that it is entirely based on the wording of the agreement itself."