When B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell and former Alberta Premier Ralph Klein signed the B.C.-Alberta Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA) in 2006, they had a grand vision for Canada.

TILMA was going to finally rid the country of so-called inter-provincial trade barriers and create a single economic space from coast to coast to coast. The agreement was said to be so appealing that others would naturally want to sign it, and the two westernmost premiers would be recognized as pioneers of a new 21st Century vision for Canada.

Remarkably (or not, if youâe(TM)ve actually read the agreement), the opposite is happening. Several provinces have taken a good long look at TILMA and said, âeoeNo way. Not worth it.âe

Just this week, Yukon Premier Dennis Fentie decided his territory would not be signing the agreement because of âeoepossible difficulties implementing the recommendations of the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Board and the large costs associated with dispute resolution.âe

Under TILMA, provincial, local and government agency (including school boards and health authorities) policies designed to protect the environment or the health of communities are, incredibly, not exempt from potential corporate lawsuits claiming they are veiled barriers to trade or investment. Should an unelected TILMA dispute panel rule against the provincial government, the fines for not removing the environmental or health-related policy could reach as high as $5 million.

To add insult to injury, if the offending province wants to keep the offending policy intact, to protect the environment or public health from some form of corporate activity, it can be hit with another TILMA challenge, and another, and another, until the government is sued into submission.

No wonder Premier Fentie is keeping his distance. And heâe(TM)s not the only one.

Last year, the Saskatchewan government also decided to steer clear of TILMA because of the threat it posed to Crown corporations, and the ability of municipal governments to set development quotas and other local policies that most people recognize as crucial to building communities the way people, not just corporations, want them to be built.

Manitoba has also said no to TILMA, preferring to deal with inter-provincial trade issues through the Agreement on Internal Trade, a national political agreement signed in 1994 that has gone a long way to removing most barriers to the movement of trade, investment and labour across provincial boundaries.

At this point, the question we should be asking is not why so many other provinces canâe(TM)t seem to grasp the alleged benefits of signing on to TILMA. It is why the Alberta and B.C. governments canâe(TM)t see how dangerous, unnecessary and unattractive the agreement is to the citizens of Canada.

Had they done what the Yukon and Saskatchewan did âe” consulted the public âe” they would know this already. They would have also found out that there are relatively few barriers to trade, investment or labour mobility in Canada. In fact, the Council of Canadians sent Inter-Provincial Trade Barrier Inspectors to the Alberta-B.C. border on April 1 of this year and found none.

So what is TILMA really for if not to remove barriers to trade?

The B.C. government will admit (and the pro-business C.D. Howe Institute backs them up) that trade and investment barriers are better understood as regulatory differences between Canadaâe(TM)s many political jurisdictions. These often small differences in local and provincial policy, most of them completely legitimate, are part of Canadaâe(TM)s federal system and are a democratic right embedded in the Constitution. If a local city council wants to put aside land for parks or any other form of development, it is their constitutional right to do so.

Many large corporations, especially foreign investors from Europe and the United States, see Canadaâe(TM)s federal system as an impediment to the establishment of universal standards in almost every sphere of government policy. Thatâe(TM)s why there is so much U.S. interest in TILMA, which, because of NAFTAâe(TM)s trade rules, will grant U.S. companies the same rights to challenge B.C. and Alberta government policy as Canadian companies from either province have.

In Quebec, Premier Jean Charest is currently pushing a TILMA-like agreement with Ontario, not because there are major barriers to the movement of goods and people between the provinces, but because he wants to pioneer a Canada-European Union free trade and investment agreement. The Europeansâe(TM) main concern? Canadaâe(TM)s federal system, which gives provinces and their municipalities jurisdictional control over their communities that EU rules are quickly eradicating.

Do you think that Alberta and B.C. could have signed an agreement like TILMA by selling it as a means to dismantle local and provincial democracy for the sake of boosting the profits of foreign investors? Of course not. So they drummed up fantasies of reducing imaginary barriers to inter-provincial trade, which is actually thriving and increasing faster than Canada-U.S. trade, according to some economists.

It is sad that Western Canadaâe(TM)s premiers misled their citizens on the real reasons for signing TILMA, and sadder that the B.C. government then had to pass TILMAâe(TM)s implementation legislation without a full debate in the legislature. And probably saddest of all that these two premiers, who so want to go down in history as pioneers, are being treated as pariahs by those provinces who were honest with their citizens and honestly couldnâe(TM)t find a single reason to join the TILMA club.