You’ve heard it, probably, a thousand times: man-made climate change is a “collective action problem.” This is a term of art in economics, not rocket science. It means that measures by a person, group, or society to limit carbon emissions might not only be costly in themselves, but competitively disadvantageous — if other people don’t take similar measures at the same time.
Companies and households should ideally act in concert, which is relatively easy to arrange if they’re all answerable to the same government. On the international scale, trust is required. The governments themselves must co-ordinate, without benefit of a powerful higher tribunal or authority. Etc., etc., yadda yadda.
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Liberals love international co-operation as an alternative to war, or to just not solving collective problems, and I am certainly liberal enough to agree. Another famous example of a collective action problem is corruption, graft and bribery by multinational companies. A company like Quebec’s SNC-Lavalin, to take a completely random example, can entertain a politician or a regulator from country A in unsavoury ways on the soil of its homeland, B. Country A’s officials don’t have investigative powers in B, and may have trouble recouping profits patriated to B. Especially if no crime under the laws of B was ever committed.
Another famous example of a collective action problem is corruption, graft and bribery by multinational companies
Again, not telling you anything you don’t know; just reminding you. The problem of international corporate corruption is why Canada signed an OECD Anti-Bribery Convention and passed a Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act (1998), creating a new crime.
As we all dissect the Liberals’ SNC-Lavalin scandal, it is hard to even keep track of the multiple injuries to the Liberal party’s image and to Justin Trudeau’s. I am seeing a lot of remarks and jokes about Trudeau’s performative commitment to equality of the sexes, or about how serious evidence-based policy-making takes a back seat so quickly to a contrived panic about jobs.
The government is obviously being let off the hook a little, however, on its devotion to internationalism. The DPA rules introduced last year contain language meant to protect the OECD convention. Those rules say that the prosecutor in a foreign bribery case is forbidden from considering “the national economic interest” in deciding whether to defer the prosecution and start bargaining with the defendant. This is another simple idea, at root: Canada’s not supposed to use DPAs to evade its promise to the civilized world.