Premiers sing same old song

By AMY CARMICHAEL
Canadian Press

(Vancouver) Premiers cranked out their old refrain of demanding more
health-care money from Ottawa on Tuesday, eating away time to solve
problems they could actually fix.

"It is unfortunate that everything else is being pushed off the
agenda," said Jock Finlayson, vice-president of the B.C. Business
Council. If this Council of the Federation is going to be meaningful and
credible over time, it needs to deal with more than health care and focus
on things the provinces can fix themselves."

As the first meeting of the newly formed council got under way, provincial
leaders as usual stressed demands to force the federal government to hand
over more health-care dollars. But New Brunswick Premier Bernard Lord said
progress was made on reducing barriers to interprovincial trade. A study on
the issue was commissioned by the premiers and will be made public after it
has been reviewed.

Mr. Lord promised an update would be made in the summer. "It gets
overshadowed when we're discussing health care, but we had quite a good
discussion on interprovincial trade," Mr. Lord said.

Still premiers were frustrated they weren't able to make more headway on
issues they had come prepared to debate. Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty,
for example, wasn't able to bring his counterparts together on a plan to
create a single securities regulator.  Manitoba Premier Gary Doer said he's
sick of failing Canadians on issues like that and doesn't want to take part
in any more old-fashioned premiers meetings. He said they are a waste of
time, characterized by pre-meeting spin out of Ottawa and the provinces and
a prepared final statement written before the leaders even sit down
together.

Interprovincial trade, he said, generates $20-billion annually, and the
fact that trade barriers continue in the name of protecting local
industries is unacceptable. For example, construction workers from Ontario
and Quebec can't cross each others borders to work even when there's a
labour shortage. Beer brewed in Ontario is more expensive for British
Columbia to import than ale from other countries. Domestic production
quotas on everything from milk to hydro thwart free trade across provincial
borders, Mr. Doer noted.

That's something the Canadian Council of Chief Executives says is
ridiculous when Canada has spent the past 15 years advocating free trade
internationally and striking accords with the U.S. and Mexico. Unfettering
interprovincial trade would be easy for the premiers to do, the council
says, because the issue has been long studied and solutions are at hand.
What is needed is political will.

Mr. Finlayson said the premiers could also work out accreditation issues
preventing everyone from dentists to construction workers and lawyers from
getting jobs in other provinces. Transport standards governing truckers
need harmonizing as do insurance regulations. Trade barriers need to be cut
back, a national securities regulator established  the list is long, Mr.
Finlayson said. He's skeptical those issues will be tackled any time soon
though.

With most provinces slipping into deficit to pay rising health care costs,
the premiers have no choice but to wrestle with the crisis. Darcy Rezac,
head of the Vancouver Board of Trade, agreed that health care is a bigger
ticket item that has to be No. 1 until stable funding is set out, but that
allowing provincial trade barriers to stand stifles the economy.

"It makes our economy less efficient. Rather than going for the best
bid, we're going for the best local bid," Mr. Rezac said."The
free flow of goods across the provincial border is the single most
important requirement in an efficient economy."

The establishment of a national securities regulator is also something the
premiers need to talk about, he said. The federal government has made it
clear it wants one and while holdout provinces like Alberta, Quebec and
British Columbia drag their heels, the companies are being discouraged from
listing in the complex Canadian market. Complying with the patchwork of
regulators in the country is also a financial burden for small companies
and investors.


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