Document Type

Article

Disciplines

International Law

Abstract

The labour "side-deal" (the "Labour Accord)1 to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)2 has an important federalist dimension, found in Annex 46, that applies only to Canada. The scheme outlined in this Annex means that unless the three largest provincial governments--Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia-choose to participate, the Accord will apply to only a small fraction of the Canadian workforce. The first section of this paper explains how this federal dimension works, and describes which portions of the Canadian workforce are "covered" by the Accord under various scenarios. The second section considers the pros and cons of "opting into" the Accord, from the standpoint of a pro-labour provincial government. The third section asks what kind of international labour rights and standards the Canadian labour movement and its political allies ought to seek, whether or not the NAFTA Labour Accord ever becomes fully operational in Canada. It approaches this question by postulating a simple model which, if implemented, would go a long way towards dealing with the objections to NAFTA and the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) raised by critics on the broad left. It then considers whether six common objections to an "international social dimension" have much force when applied to this model. It is argued that they do not.

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