The real choice

As a follow-up to this post, let's note that Jake McEwan's TILMA cheerleading job does stand out in one respect. Unlike most arguments for the agreement, it doesn't try to pretend that the TILMA will do anything but obliterate the ability of provinces and municipalities to act for the public good, as McEwan instead tries to paint the effective elimination of provincial autonomy as a plus:

Canadians have been hampered by an inter-provincial distrust of the power of free markets to produce economic and social benefits.

As a result, federalism has evolved into an inefficient system of provincial and municipal enclaves of economic autonomy. Provincial economic independence has created an interprovincial trading system that hampers productivity through barriers that curb the flow of goods and services...

We can continue to have barriers that perpetuate regional divisions and fragment the nation into a series of city-states and regional solitudes, or we can integrate as a whole and create a more productive Canada with free movement of goods, capital and people.

I couldn't disagree much more strongly with McEwan's conclusion or with his false assumptions about the upside of the TILMA. But it's worth highlighting that the choice facing provinces is indeed largely as McEwan describes.

On the one hand, each province can choose to maintain its authority to operate independently, which can easily include efforts to harmonize those rules which can be agreed to without a TILMA-style straitjacket. On the other, each province can throw in its lot with the TILMA in hopes that enough economic benefits result for their citizens and municipalities to not mind the fact that the provincial government (including all municipalities) is effectively unable to respond to their needs.

Given how many provinces have rightly been concerned in the past about relatively minor intrusions on their freedom to act when those are created by the federal government, it's hard to see how many (aside from the rabidly right-wing regimes which have already signed on) would have reason to be happy with the latter option merely because it's a self-imposed restraint. And that's doubly so given the lack of anything approaching a reliable indication that the TILMA will actually bring about any substantial economic benefits.

While there's been loads of misinformation about what's actually included in the TILMA, the only honest case for the agreement as drafted is to claim - as McEwan implicitly does - that the very notion of democratic provincial government is quaint and outmoded. The problem for the TILMA's backers is that there's little reason to believe that the public at large shares that view - which will hopefully push the rest of Canada's provinces to avoid signing away their autonomy as Alberta and B.C. already have.