Eliminating Barriers to Internal Trade 

Reflections

Eliminating Barriers to Internal Trade

Any progress made to support freer trade and greater labour mobility within Canada makes good business sense.

For years CGA-Canada has actively supported the broadening of trade and labour mobility inside Canada. A key tool at our disposal has been the 1994 federal/provincial Agreement on Internal Trade (AIT). 

We’ve been pleased to see progress through two successful challenges brought forward by CGA-Canada under the AIT. And as a result, we’re closer to achieving full labour mobility and professional practice rights for CGAs in all Canadian jurisdictions.

While we have long supported the goals of the AIT, we’ve also criticized its lack of teeth. Its enforcement mechanisms are weak; some would call them non-existent. But the spirit of the AIT continues to be felt. Recently the House of Commons Standing Committee on International Trade saw fit not only to call for new initiatives to support more Canadian external trade agreements, but it also issued a warning about the continuation of trade barriers inside Canada and their negative impact on our competitiveness.

The Commons committee is not alone in its concern about internal trade barriers. The World Trade Organization had these observations in a recent trade policy review of Canada: “Productivity growth could be accelerated by, among other things, eliminating barriers to agricultural imports, removing restrictions on foreign investment, minimizing subsidies that distort competition, and dismantling obstacles to internal trade.”

That’s why we watched with interest the recent implementation of a new free trade agreement between Alberta and British Columbia – the Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA). It’s the first inter-provincial trade agreement of its kind to include energy. It’s also got a much more robust dispute resolution mechanism than the AIT, one modelled on the UN Commission on International Trade Law, which includes dispute panels and imposing financial penalties.

While Canada is still a long way from a truly open domestic market, we are making progress. With the introduction of side agreements such as TILMA, the issue remains on Canadians’ radar screens. And CGA-Canada will take every opportunity to keep the issue alive, because we believe it’s important for Canada’s economy to reduce and eventually eliminate trade barriers, and to ensure that rules are in place to make that happen.

For more on this, please review our latest publication titled: It’s Time to Move on from the Agreement on Internal Trade!, on our website at www.cga.org/canada.

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