Good afternoon. My name is Krista Campbell. I'm the director general of the strategic policy branch at Industry Canada. I'm accompanied by two colleagues, Catherine Foskett, the manager of the internal trade group, and Prue Thomson, senior adviser responsible for internal trade.
The Agreement on Internal Trade is a national agreement. It was signed in 1994 by, at the time, all 13 jurisdictions in Canada: the federal government, the provinces, and the two territories. Nunavut was not in existence at that time. The goal of the agreement is to eliminate barriers to the mobility of goods, labour, and services.
In December 2008 and June 2012, all council of internal trade ministers approved amendments to the dispute resolution procedures. Specifically what they approved were measures to strengthen the dispute resolution mechanism for complaints by a person against governments or between governments. All other AIT parties have either enacted or are in the process of enacting the required legislative changes to implement these amendments.
In effect, the proposed bill does three things. It enables the payment of monetary penalties from the consolidated revenue fund and ensures that such penalties would be handled in a way and enforceable similar to other penalties levied against the federal government through the Federal Court of Canada. It applies more strict criteria for appointing individuals to dispute resolution panels and other decision-making functions. It does some housekeeping by updating some of the provision numbers within the agreement and the legislation.