{"id":840978,"date":"2026-08-01T19:41:26","date_gmt":"2026-08-01T19:41:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/840978\/"},"modified":"2026-08-01T19:41:26","modified_gmt":"2026-08-01T19:41:26","slug":"still-a-lot-left-to-do-on-advancing-internal-trade-more-than-a-year-after-feds-dropped-barriers-experts-say-the-hill-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/840978\/","title":{"rendered":"Still ‘a lot left to do\u2019 on advancing internal trade, more than a year after feds dropped barriers, experts say – The Hill Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just over a year after the Carney Liberals held up their promise to drop federal barriers to internal trade, provinces still need to make strides to increase labour mobility and the trade of services, say economists and interprovincial trade experts.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s still a lot left to do,\u201d said Trevor Tombe, a professor of economics at the University of Calgary.<\/p>\n

Bill C-5, the One Canadian Economy Act, dropped 53 federal carveouts in the Canadian Free Trade Agreement (CFTA), on Canada Day 2025. Following that, provinces scrambled to strike trade deals with neighbouring provinces,<\/a> with Ontario notably inking agreements with seven provinces and all three territories.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to take away from the actions we\u2019ve seen since last year,\u201d said Tombe. \u201cThe past year-and-a-half has seen more progress on internal trade\u2014though it\u2019s hard to measure explicitly\u2014than ever before.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Trevor Tombe, a professor in the department of economics at the University of Calgary, says there\u2019s \u2018still lots left to do\u2019 in encouraging interprovincial trade. Handout photograph<\/p>\n

But, he added, there\u2019s still work for the provinces, particularly in encouraging the internal trade of services by mutually recognizing credentials. For example, a health-care worker in Ontario can\u2019t work in another province without also going through that province\u2019s credentialing process. That means an industry like telehealth will face significant trade barriers between provinces, Tombe said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s been almost no movement there, in terms of mutual recognition or other approaches that makes it easier for someone to sell a service across a provincial border without going through multiple registrations,\u201d he said. \u201cEvery province is different in terms of those [licences], and that\u2019s a barrier to our ability to trade, in this case, health-care services.\u201d<\/p>\n

Don Drummond, formerly TD Bank\u2019s chief economist and also a past assistant deputy minister at the Finance Department, was blunt in his analysis of how much progress has been made over the past year.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot very much,\u201d he told The Hill Times.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst, the federal government committed to do what it could do, and it did that. But the federal government wasn\u2019t the main problem, so that didn\u2019t accomplish very much.\u201d<\/p>\n

There have been \u201cminor agreements\u201d between provinces to encourage trade, he said, but \u201cwe still have restrictions on labour mobility and certification across provinces, so the major obstacles remain unchanged.\u201d<\/p>\n

The tariff war with the United States and the uncertain future of a North American free trade pact should light a fire under provincial leaders, he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf that\u2019s not a wake-up call, I don\u2019t know what is,\u201d Drummond said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Don Drummond, former TD Bank chief economist and a past assistant deputy minister at the Finance Department, says trade tensions with the U.S. should be a \u2018wake-up call.\u2019 Handout photograph<\/p>\n

\u201cStill, in Ontario, Quebec construction workers can work here, but Ontario workers can\u2019t work in Quebec, and that\u2019s terribly unfair to the Ontario workers. But [Premier] Doug Ford and everybody else in Ontario has never been able to convince Quebec otherwise.\u201d<\/p>\n

On June 29, Internal Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc (Beaus\u00e9jour, N.B.) issued a statement on the heels of a meeting with provincial and territorial ministers responsible for internal trade, urging his counterparts to \u201cmove faster\u201d and \u201cmeet established timelines.\u201d<\/p>\n

The statement said trade and labour mobility barriers hinder economic growth, and add unnecessary costs and delays.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to make it easier for businesses to sell goods and services across the country, and for skilled workers to apply their expertise where it is needed in Canada,\u201d LeBlanc\u2019s statement reads.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cThe Committee on Internal Trade can play a leadership role in driving change across the country\u2014but for that to happen, we must move faster on our priorities, and meet established timelines.\u201d<\/p>\n

That starts with meeting promises to which provincial and territorial leaders committed earlier this year, LeBlanc\u2019s statement said, including expanding mutual recognition to the services sector by the end of the year, harmonizing health and safety training requirements in the construction sector by this fall, and implementing digital public registries to speed up credential verification for skilled trades workers by next spring, among other commitments.<\/p>\n

\"\"Dominic LeBlanc, minister responsible for Intergovernmental Affairs and One Canadian Economy, has urged provincial counterparts to honour previous commitments to lower internal trade barriers. The Hill Times photograph by Andrew Meade<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve only been talking about this since 1867,\u201d said Drummond, a fellow-in-residence at the C.D. Howe Institute. \u201cI mean, let\u2019s not rush into anything rashly here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Conversely, SeoRhin Yoo, a senior policy analyst of interprovincial affairs with the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses, described the progress made on internal trade as \u201cmonumental,\u201d with all the provinces \u201cmaking commitments towards a freer internal trade market.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"SeoRhin Yoo, a senior policy analyst of interprovincial affairs for the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, described the progress made on internal trade as \u2018monumental.\u2019 Handout photograph<\/p>\n

She cited the Canadian Mutual Recognition Agreement on the Sale of Goods<\/a>\u2014signed in November 2025 by federal, provincial, and territorial members of the Committee on Internal Trade\u2014as one of the year\u2019s success stories since the agreement allows products that are legal in one province to be sold across the country.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of this work was almost unimaginable two years ago,\u201d she said, but added LeBlanc should get \u201ckudos\u201d for rallying provincial leaders.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did see moments where it felt like motivation was almost faltering,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In one instance, a deal for direct-to-consumer alcohol shipments was supposed to be finalized between all 10 provinces and the Yukon by the end of May. That deal eventually was signed during the Council of the Federation summer meeting in Charlottetown, P.E.I., in late July. Quebec and Yukon did not sign on, though a joint statement says both aim to do so<\/a> \u201cin the near future.\u201d <\/p>\n


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The provinces breached the \u201cvery public\u201d self-imposed deadline for the direct-to-consumer alcohol deal, said Ryan Manucha, an internal trade expert and a research fellow at the C.D. Howe Institute.<\/p>\n

\"\"Internal trade expert Ryan Manucha says labour mobility is a top priority. Handout photograph<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat does that mean for literally anything else of ambition?\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But, he added, individual provinces like Ontario are \u201cstepping up\u201d in signalling that mutual recognition of credentials will soon be expanded. Labour mobility is a top priority, Manucha said, adding he expected the mutual recognition agreement to expand before the year\u2019s end.<\/p>\n

Tombe, though, said he\u2019s not sure how to overcome the \u201cdifficult politics\u201d of mutual recognition and credentials, with provincial licensing bodies potentially viewing the move as a threat to their independence and authority.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut economically speaking, mutual recognition and professional credentials is perhaps the biggest source of potential economic growth,\u201d Tombe said. \u201cIf it were easy, I suppose we would have done it already.\u201d<\/p>\n

mglass@hilltimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n

The Hill Times<\/p>\n

\u00a0 \n <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Marlo Glass is a news reporter covering the federal public service and everything newsworthy on Parliament Hill. She is also The Hill Times’ deputy digital editor. Glass hails from Winnipeg. With a background in breaking news, her career spans over several cities including Ottawa, Saint John, and Halifax where she covered crime, local government, and the occasional cat up a tree. Glass holds a degree in rhetoric, writing, and communication from the University of Winnipeg. Send tips to mglass@hilltimes.com. See all stories BY MARLO GLASS<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Just over a year after the Carney Liberals held up their promise to drop federal barriers to internal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":840979,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[45,49,48,46],"class_list":["post-840978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=840978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840978\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/840979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=840978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=840978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=840978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}