De Jong is not as sure as his trades council counterpart that the Red Seal program has all the answers. It has weaknesses, the CLAC leader says. “Just because a person has a Red Seal doesn’t mean he has the appropriate prior experience.” Workers who have experience on building construction might be out of their depth on pipelines, he says.

Students of labor mobility detect economic and political nuances that suggest there is more to the concept than meets the eye. The issue has multiple dimensions, suggests Joseph Doucet, Enbridge professor of energy policy and director of the Centre for Applied Business Research and the Environment at the University of Alberta.

“Our perspective here in Alberta has, for the last little while, been one-sided, given that Alberta has benefited from a massive influx of workers from elsewhere in Canada.”

The U of A economist generally favors mobility in trade, goods, services and workers but he also recognizes the need to assess another side of the story. “Where this tends to meet opposition is in communities that are going to suffer, quite often, when workers from other regions are going to come in.”

Doucet says old government policies that limit mobility were often spawned as protection for workers and services in the communities that elected the politicians responsible. Doors are only easy to open to outsiders in good economic times when new arrivals are no threat to local livelihoods.

In lean times, “we see retrenchment and people not wanting to have that kind of mobility.” That could be the case in Ontario, where auto workers have taken a series of body blows as manufacturers closed off 20,000 jobs, he points out. “It would be unsurprising to have people in Ontario, particularly in areas that are hard hit by the demise of the auto industry, to have (MPPs) and other folks (in authority) say, ‘We don’t want the government to negotiate more trade mobility because the auto industry has shed 20,000 jobs. Why should we make it easier for pipefitters from Manitoba or Quebec to come in here and take jobs? We already have a surplus of workers for not enough jobs.’”

That’s not a case an economist would make, he says, but it would be a political and social reality.

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