A New Prescription: Can the BC-Alberta TILMA Resuscitate Internal Trade in Canada?

Interprovincial trade barriers are a drag on Canadian productivity and send an embarrassing message to international investors.Despite some past progress in reducing them, they remain an irritant to our economic union. Trade liberalization as pursued by Alberta and British Columbia in the TILMA is a model that Ottawa and the provinces should pursue.Canadian Agreement on Internal Trade,Alberta-British Columbia Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement

Interprovincial Barriers to Labour Mobility in Canada:Policy, Knowledge Gaps and Research Issues

The purpose of this paper is to identify the most important knowledge gaps on interprovincial barriers to labour mobility in Canada, and to shed some light on potential conceptual, methodological, and data issues associated with research in this area. Consequently, it provides an overview of the current state of play with respect to the most important issues relating to inter-provincial barriers to labour mobility within the Canadian internal market. The three main barriers to labour mobility in Canada, which are considered, are: residency requirements; certain practices regarding occupational licensing, certification and registration; and differences in how occupational qualifications are recognized. These are the main regulatory barriers that are to be removed or reduced under Chapter 7, the Labour Mobility Chapter of the Agreement on Internal Trade (AIT). It also reviews critically the recent relevant research in Canada and in some other jurisdictions (the United States, the European Union and Australia) on barriers to labour mobility. The paper finds that the most important knowledge gap concerns the extent of the regulatory barriers to labour mobility and their impacts and costs. It also concludes that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the approach of mutual recognition being pursued in Canada to eliminate such regulatory barriers. However, while there has been a fair degree of success in Canada in achieving occupation-specific Mutual Recognition Agreements for occupational qualifications and reconciliation of differences in occupational standards, this progress has been too slow. Moreover, the functioning of the dispute resolution mechanism with respect to Chapter 7, is overly complex and inaccessible. The dispute resolution mechanism in the Alberta-B.C. Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement is stronger and simpler than that of the AIT, and definitely one to be considered as a model to improve the AIT.: labour, labour mobility, internal markets, internal trade

Seattle and Beyond: The WTO Millennium Round

This book is a comprehensive guide to the Millennium Round of multilateral trade negotiations which will be launched at the Third WTO Ministerial Meeting in Seattle in early December 1999. It deals in a readable way with the many difficult and controversial issues that will arise during the planned three-year negotiations. These include: the new trade areas like the environment, labour standards, e-commerce and competition policy; the issues that were new in the last Uruguay Round, such as trade in services and intellectual property rights, that are still far from resolved; and trade in agriculture, which is still badly in need of reform after a modest start in the last Round. This book will provide all those interested in international business and domestic policy matters with the comprehensive overview they need to understand the dynamics of the WTO Millennium Round and the complex interaction of the trade and domestic policy issues.World Trade Organization; international trade negotiations

Canada in the Global Economy:An Overview

On the cusp of the millennium and as the century that was supposed to belong to Canada draws to a close, we find ourselves as a medium-sized nation exercising an influence out of all proportion to our size. This special issue on Canada in the Global Economy gives us a chance to sum up where we have been and look forward to where we might be oing. All the papers contained in this issue were delivered at the annual policy conference of the Canadian Association for Business Economics.Globalization, Trade, International Financial Institutions

Why Is Interprovincial Trade Down and International Trade Up?

The drop in the share of interprovincial exports in GDP can be fully explained by several factors: the reductions in Canadian tariffs that have opened up the domestic market to foreign competition; the slower growth of that market compared with the U.S.; and relatively low increases in the prices of goods traded interprovincially. Those concerned about the weakening of the Canadian internal market should take some comfort that, except for the relatively small increases in the prices of interprovincial exports, these factors should have run their course and are unlikely to cause any further declines in the share of interprovincial exports in GDP. Even more encouraging, there is some evidence the AIT has helped to increase interprovincial exports. The jump in international exports can be fully explained by improved Canadian labor costs relative to the U.S., reductions in tariffs paid on U.S. imports from Canada almost entirely as a result of the FTA/NAFTA, and, most importantly, the U.S.’s prodigious growing appetite for imports, some of which may be unsustainable given the recent magnitude of the U.S. current account deficit. The increase in Canada’s international exports, remarkable as it was, would have been even larger if it had not been for the decline in their price relative to the price of GDP.Interprovincial trade in Canada, Agreement on Internal Trade

Sunflower Production

The success of sunflower production is discussed in this document with a focus on hybrid selection, planting, fertilization, weed control, disease, insect and bird control

Canola Production

Canola is an edible form of rapeseed developed by Canadian plant breeders in the 1970s. Rapeseed and canola are members of the mustard family, which also includes tame and wild mustard, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, and turnip. The term “canola” was registered in 1979 by the Western Canadian Oilseed Crushers Association as the name for rapeseed varieties with genetically modified oil composition and lowered glucosinolates. Canola varieties must have less than 2% erucic acid in the processed oil and less than 30 micromoles of glucosinolates per gram of oil-free meal. The lowered levels of these two seed components enable the oil to be used for human consumption and the meal to be fed to livestock. Canola seed contains about 40% oil and 23% protein. The oil is high in mono- and polyunsaturated fatty acids (oleic, linoleic, and linolenic). The meal contains about 36 to 40% protein after oil extraction and is highly palatable. In contrast, rapeseed oil contains 40% or more erucic acid and is used primarily as an industrial lubricant. The high erucic acid content makes rapeseed oil a poor-quality vegetable oil for human consumption. Rapeseed meal contains glucosinolates that lead to palatability and nutritional problems when formulated into animal feeds. China, Canada, and Europe are the major world producers of canola/rapeseed. U.S. canola production has risen from 199,000 acres in 1993 to over 1.1 million acres in 1998. North Dakota and Minnesota lead the U.S. in canola production