Ah, yer just talkin' procurement 'cos you find HaloScan message-board editing too much work. You hope to post on a subject so boring that no one outside Osgoode Hall or the NDP could even have an opinion on it.
Well, you win. Kind of a Prick's Victory, though, as the classicists say. Gonna ID you in public one of these days, Pith. -- Yrs, Literatus.
I don't understand the last idea: "why have a federation if you don't have free trade within it" - in connection with what appears to be the perspective in the rest of the article, namely, that: the Feds could and really ought to impose a "principle-based" law on procurement that Pithy says would mirror international requirements of trade agreements: (favoured nation status and national treatment).
I don't see how those principles add up to 'free trade' in any case; and I don't see how forcing the provinces to go along with them amounts to 'free trade' in the eyes of Canadians.
Moreover, I have yet to see any evidence whatsoever that the present U.S. administration intends to "favour" Canada in any respect - whether we trail it wagging our tails or not.
I think we would be fools to go along
with any U.S. agenda. Obama's first quarter has seen a string of broken campaign promises and a pattern of looking out for number 1.
What we should be doing is addressing the problem of our continued over-reliance on one capricious and treacherous customer for our goods.
The big benefit from opening up our procurement process would be better value for provincial and municipal procurement. So it's a win, regardless of what the Americans do.
Unfortunately, in Canada, it seems unlikely we will get really open procurement inter-provincially unless we get it internationally.
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