Canada's Premiers Reach Agreement on Labour Migration

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Throughout the past week, Canadian premiers have been meeting in Quebec City to discuss various national issues and how they are effecting the various regions of Canada. The economy, natural resource management and its environmental aspects, and national employment concerns were top-most on the agenda.

Although Premiers Jean Charest (PQ) and Dalton McGuinty (ON) had previously reached an agreement to reduce carbon emissions, this past June, McGuinty held out little hope for wider agreements at the start of talks.

"I don't think it's reasonable for us to expect that we're going to emerge with a consensus. ...We just have different provinces, different economies, different perspectives."

Where Charest and McGuinty concentrated on carbon-cap trading between their provinces, Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach came to the meeting convinced that "carbon containment" was the best move forward. His province has recently announced a $4 billion initiative for these and other improvements to his province's booming petroleum industry—certain that the needs of the economy and the environment can be met without much trade-off. Meanwhile, New Brunswick Premier Shawn Graham, representing an Atlantic province heavily involved in resource management, expressed concern about inter-provincial trade barriers hampering his province's ability to attract and retain qualified workers—citing a need for 33,000 skilled workers in the near future.

Although these barriers were not specifically defined, the premiers were able to reach consensus on streamlining professional accreditation between provinces.

"We believe working people and their families want to have a situation where they do not have to go through 13 separate accreditation processes but rather one accreditation process ... We believe that a teacher is a teacher, and a nurse is a nurse, a welder is a welder and we believe that that will be accomplished with the accreditation acceptance of each of our jurisdictions," said Manitoba Premier Gary Doer.

The signed agreement, of all present, includes several goals to be reached by April, 2009: amending inter-provincial trade agreements, full worker mobility, and unifying accreditation between provinces. These improvements will, if successful, allow Canadians to work in any region without the added cost – in time and money – of formalized skill testing when they relocate.

There was little progress on Canada's overall economy as some regions in Canada are experiencing continued booms (Alberta and British Columbia), while others are suffering from high unemployment, and shortages for skilled labour (the Atlantic provinces and Ontario). As no general agreement could be reached, the premiers have called on Canada's central bank to offer advice and aid. Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney offered a mixed review of the current and likely future track for the economy.

• although the first quarter saw a contraction, the second and following quarters are predicted to show an annual growth of 3.3 percent in GDP by 2010.
• current inflation at 4.3 percent is expected to fall to a more modest 2 percent by the second half of 2009—keeping in line with acceptable levels between 1 and 3 percent

While these predictions are encouraging, they do little to address the regional concerns in Canada. National averages look good on paper, but they do little to balance the needs of provinces competing for shrinking resources or answer how various regions will transform their regional economies.

Hopefully, the progress on employment mobility and partial agreement on environmental concerns will foster new options to explore—enabling Canada to rebound from this decline more quickly than in the past.