A questionable position

Considering that the Saskatchewan Party's initial stance was to slam Lorne Calvert's government for not signing onto the TILMA before it realized the political risks of supporting the agreement, it shouldn't be much surprise that Brad Wall is now looking for excuses to sign on after promising not to. But let's take a look at just what Wall's latest position really means:

The chief reasons the Saskatchewan Party government has said it won’t join TILMA centre on the impact on municipalities and Crown corporation subsidiaries. Whatever agreement Saskatchewan signs “won’t compromise” on those commitments, Wall said.

“If literally in the last number of months — just prior to the actual implementation of the TILMA agreement April 1 09 here in a few weeks — if all of those issues that we have are somehow addressed and to our satisfaction, I guess it could be incorporated as part of the Western economic partnership,” the premier said, though he added those changes don't appear to have been made...

Now, it's certainly for the best that Wall hasn't yet done a complete 180 and simply signed onto the TILMA in its current form. But the Sask Party's position now seems designed to allow them to sign on while pacifying the groups which have been most vocal against the agreement, while refusing to deal with the more basic flaws in the agreement and its stated rationale.

As I've discussed before, the ultimate philosophy underlying TILMA is that democratically-elected governments should be constrained by a need to put the interests of investors above those of their citizens, with an end goal of eliminating substantive regulation in general. And that strikes me as a problematic position to take regardless of the actors involved.

Of course, the Sask Party government is entirely happy to sign away its own ability to govern. But recognizing that some municipalities in particular don't share that zeal, Wall is apparently trying to take opposition based on municipal or Crown corporation interests off the table - avoiding the public concerns raised by those types of actors about the TILMA's signing in B.C. and Alberta, while still imposing the underlying structure on the province as a whole.

But the question of who might avoid the TILMA's effects for the moment (and there can't be much doubt that any move to sign TILMA would strengthen a push to impose on municipalities and Crowns as well) is ultimately secondary to that of whether or not an agreement such as the TILMA serves a positive purpose in the first place. And the fact that Wall's focus is merely on exempting the sectors which have already put up resistance rather than the slightest doubt about the agreement's basic underpinnings should offer ample reason for concern.