Now that we’re talking trade, it works be a good time to address Canada’s internal trade barriers:
“Let’s sit down and come up with a list, because everyone wants to protect something – no matter if it’s the dairy cow in Newfoundland, or the wine in B.C., or ourselves – everyone’s guilty,” he added.
Consumers are confronted by these roadblocks every day. A craft brewery in Quebec can’t sell its beer directly to a nearby restaurant in Ottawa. An engineer in New Brunswick has to get licensed in neighbouring Nova Scotia before practising there. A truck driver in British Columbia can only drive certain truck configurations at night but must do so during the day in Alberta – leaving a narrower time frame to make an interprovincial trek.
Taken together, these barriers are constraining Canada’s economic potential. Research shows that tearing them down would give the economy a sizable boost – perhaps enough to offset the hit from steep U.S. tariffs.
That’s not helped by government from municipal up using Facebook and Twitter to communicate, or that small town papers are being bought up in droves by (American) conglomerates and then turned into trash with no value for people in small communities.