I referred earlier to the study we'd done called Death by a Thousand Paper Cuts: The Effect of Barriers to Competition on Canadian Productivity, where we tried, using economists' tools, to come up with a measure on the drag on productivity. We found that there is a relationship between the price differences. We did a Canada-U.S. comparison, and the assumption was that non-tariff barriers, barriers really on the service sector, would be the drag on productivity, and we found a positive correlation. We had a hypothesis that barriers would slow Canadian productivity. The numbers confirmed our hypothesis.
We have not done a similar study across the country. There has actually never been a study to look at price differences between the B.C. Lower Mainland and southern Ontario and the Saguenay to see whether consumers have to pay more for services because of barriers that exist, for example, in the mobility of skilled workers between provinces. It is really quite striking how we've been debating interprovincial trade barriers for a long time.... And there is a method. We've actually read the literature, and studies were done in Europe, as the Europeans moved to more of a common platform, concerning how there were huge gains to the European economy from reducing barriers. It is very striking that a similar study has not been done in Canada. We would love to do it.