There’s been a lot of chatter about interprovincial trade barriers lately — namely, that Canada should remove them, with federal and provincial officials saying that opening up domestic trade could soften the impact of potential U.S. tariffs. But what are these barriers, and how do they impact our daily lives?
Just imagine that Canada’s 13 provinces and territories are each a small country, said Moshe Lander, an economics professor at Concordia University in Montreal.
“Each of which has its own government, its own ability to tax, its own spending decisions, its own regulations on road safety, health standards, educational qualifications — those types of things, if they differ between one province and another, is an interprovincial barrier.”
A 2019 IMF report showed that the country was leaving money on the table by keeping these barriers in place. In today’s dollars, removing them would pump $245 billion into the economy, report co-author Trevor Tombe recently said.
So what are some …