Economist Jim Stanford recommended city council find a way to exempt Thunder Bay from the Canada-European Comprehensive Trade Agreement.
Stanford, an economist with the Canadian Autoworkers, made a deputation to council at Monday night’s meeting. Stanford warned that if Canada went ahead with the CETA deal then municipalities like Thunder Bay would be negatively impacted.
He said that the procurement rules would hurt local companies and used Bombardier as an example. He estimated the trade agreement could cost the city more than a 1000 jobs and possible put 3000 jobs in the region at risk if Bombardier were to close.
With all the economic and political uncertainty happening in Europe, he recommended that the city find a way to be exempt from the agreement.
“Europe already sells much more to us than we sell to them so we have a large existing trading imbalance,” Stanford said.
“The Euro has declined versus our loonie that has made their products additionally more competitive far more so than impact of tariff reduction. CETA imposes major restrictions on the decision making of municipal governments.”
He said the biggest threat to Thunder Bay could be the restrictions on public procurement.
National procurement would be constrained because of international trade agreements and would eliminate provincial, municipal or any agencies in the public sector to use economic development criteria to award contracts, he said.
Having those economic development criteria is the whole reason a plant like Bombardier exists, he said.
“The debate has become so politicized in a way that if you speak against signing a free trade agreement you are somehow a protectionist.”
“Trade is important to Canada’s prosperity but where and how can we promote our trade? That knee jerk idea of signing a free-trade agreement with anyone you can has not born out in practice.”
Council grilled Stanford, lobbing a number of questions his way, but ultimately weren’t able to make a decision and voted to postpone the issue for another time.
The Thunder Bay Community Economic Development Commission also gave a presentation on how well the organization was creating jobs last year. The presentation showed 199 jobs were created through direct and indirect means.
The presentation broke it down by sectors and how many jobs were created in each.
According to the presentation, the sectors and the number of jobs created were:
• Manufacturing/Fabrication – 23
• Mining – 110
• Forestry – four
• Transportation – four
• Health Sciences – 15
• ICT/Professional Services – six
• Small businesses/ Entrepreneur Centre – 17
• Economic Development Reserve Fund – 20
Council also approved all constructions contracts. These included the installation of traffic signals on Oliver Road between the Regional Hospital and the Lakehead University Fieldhouse entrance.
The largest of the items that came to Council was a $2.1-million contract for work around the new Thunder Bay Consolidated Courthouse building.
That work includes road resurfacing, sidewalk and curb replacement, street lighting and underground construction on the four streets around the new facility.
