Prime Minister Mark Carney’s meeting with Canada’s premiers is expected to see discussions on vows to knock down interprovincial trade barriers.
And industry experts say much of what is left to be done lies in the hands of the provinces.
“It’s just become a little more pressing in the last year. But I don’t see any great advancement that would make us feel like the end is near,” said Concordia University economist Moshe Lander.
In June last year, the federal government expanded the Canadian Free Trade Agreement and removed federal barriers to interprovincial trade.
However, since most of the barriers removed by the federal government had to do with procurement rules, they represent a very small percentage of the obstacles holding back free trade in Canada, said Ryan Greer, senior vice-president at Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters.
“The real heavy lifting is to be done at the provincial level,” Greer said.
Here is where things stand in some of the sectors that impact you.
One of the biggest milestones on the road to free trade within Canada came in November, when all provincial, territorial and federal jurisdictions signed the Canadian Mutual Recognition Agreement on the Sale of Goods (CMRA).
The agreement allows for “goods lawfully sold in one province or territory to be sold in another without facing further requirements.”
“Everybody thinks that their rules are the best rules,” said Corinne Pohlmann, executive vice-president of the Canadian Federation of Small Business.
“But if you mutually recognize, say, OK, you keep your rule, and I’m going to keep my rule, but we’re just going to agree that the rules are sort of equal.”
The scope of the agreement is pretty broad, applying to everything from appliances, industrial machinery and vehicles to electronics, furniture, clothing and household goods.
However, it has some key exceptions: food, beverages (including alcohol), tobacco, cannabis, plants and live animals.
The result is that for Ontario wineries, it is currently easier to sell to the international markets in the U.K., Asia Pacific and Nordic countries than to sell in neighbouring Quebec, said Michelle Wasylyshen, president and CEO of Ontario Craft Wineries.
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“Clearly this limits consumer choice and runs counter to the spirit of a truly open Canadian market, which we are all striving for in today’s trade-centric environment,” she said.
In July, all jurisdictions — except Newfoundland and Labrador and Yukon — signed an agreement called the Memorandum of Understanding on Direct-to-Consumer Alcohol Sales.
The agreement is meant to go into effect in May.
“If you’re a consumer, by May of this year, you’re supposed to be able to purchase alcohol from a winery or a brewery or a distillery in another province (sent) directly to your home,” Pohlmann said.
However, businesses such as restaurants can’t use this yet.
“You have to go through the provincial liquor system,” she said, and Lander cautioned significant changes are unlikely in the near-term.
“Supply chains usually involve contracts that can run months, if not years, into the future. Even when you sign those deals, even if they’re fully implemented immediately, it’s going to take some time to change that supply chain and to discover new suppliers,” he said.
During Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s press conference alongside New Brunswick Premier Susan Holt on Wednesday, he said great progress had been made in getting goods made in Ontario across provincial lines last year.
“Over the past year, the amount of Ontario export products moving through Port Saint John, including major categories like vehicles, metals, forestry, agricultural products have increased, as Premier Holt said, by 153 per cent, with more than two and a half times as much traffic compared to 2024,” he said.
While rail and air travel are federally regulated in Canada, it is the rules around trucking that are a kind of microcosm of barriers to free trade, said Greer.
“Trucking is a good illustration of how slow and difficult this work was,” he said.
The retail industry has had to bear the cost of unevenly applied rules around trucking, said Matt Poirier, vice-president of the Retail Council of Canada.
“When a province has different rules than another province that would require trucks to stop at the border, change loads, change trucks, all those things might make sense in that province, but when you look at it as a system across a national system, it really falls apart quickly,” he said.
During a meeting in Saskatoon last June, Canada’s first ministers agreed to iron out some of these differences.
“There are slight rule differences in how the truck is configured in each province in terms of the weights and the tires and the flags they use. Those are the things they’re working on trying to harmonize a little bit more,” Pohlmann said.
However, Poirier said it will take a long time to harmonize the trucking industry fully.
One factor is the Canadian weather.
“Quebec has worse winters than Ontario on average, which is why they have winter tire mandates. If you were to impose the same thing in Ontario to create that parity, you start to run into a lot of cost increases,” he said.
The deeper problem, however, is that much of Canada’s road infrastructure is catered to trading with the U.S., rather than between provinces.
“When you leave Vancouver, is it easier to get to Los Angeles, or is it easier to get Winnipeg? They’re roughly, say, the same distance away from each other,” he said.
“You zip to the U.S. border, get onto I-5 and you can go all the way down — not just to Los Angeles, you can go all of the way to Mexico and get into Tijuana,” he added.
In June, the federal government introduced Bill C-5, the One Canadian Economy Act. As part of the larger bill, the government also passed the Free Trade and Labour Mobility in Canada Act.
While the law knocks down federal barriers to labour mobility, allowing workers in one province to live and work freely in another, an analysis from Canadian business law firm Miller Thompson shows the law has its limitations.
“The Labour Mobility Act only applies to federal projects in federally-regulated sectors such as railway, telecommunications and banking. Provincial projects will need to continue to comply with provincial legislation,” the law firm said in a report on its website.
The web of regulations and certification regimes still exist, Pohlmann said.
“Every province has its own college or structure that certifies you as being a tradesperson in this province. You have to usually get re-certified in that province if you’re moving,” she said.
“Those certification processes in some instances can take six months or more, or even a year to get done. In the meantime, you really can’t work.”
However, some provinces have started to make changes, she said.
“If you come to Ontario and you need to get certified, you can go through that process, but you can also start working much more quickly. And they push the college or certification body to get that certification done more quickly,” she said.
