On the second part of your question, I have a very simple answer. It's not an issue we've looked at in terms of barriers, but I can tell you that the capacity of the services sector to improve Canada's competitiveness internationally exists. I think the committee has heard other witnesses talk to that issue. There's an incredible untapped potential in that area.
In terms of accounting specifically, for us, we are expanding internationally, as I mentioned. We just signed an agreement with a Caribbean CGA association where, if you want, you can export CGA know-how and knowledge to help the Caribbean single market become a reality.
We've signed mutual recognition agreements to allow our members to export their services. However, there are some barriers I've talked about in terms of being blocked out of markets, because there are three accounting bodies in Canada.
In Canada the number I quoted--the $3 billion--comes from the Department of Finance, and the second number comes from the Premier of Alberta. So there is a discrepancy with this number, or there is not agreement on the number but there is agreement that barriers exist.
The barriers relate a lot to licensing. Our area has been professional services. We've looked at our specific area, and as I mentioned, still to this day, the legislation is in place but it's not fully implemented. Certified general accountants in Alberta or in Manitoba cannot practise their trade in Ontario or Quebec--as we know, two of Canada's largest capital markets. So those are barriers.
Many organizations can talk to you about their specific issues, so I don't want to talk about that. I want to talk about what's needed in terms of what happens when there are barriers, because even if we reduce all barriers, people have a tendency, perhaps, to erect new barriers. But what has failed us is really the Agreement on Internal Trade. We do not have an effective interprovincial trade agreement that allows organizations, groups, and individuals to force governments to break down their barriers.
Our case in point is this. We launched two trade challenges against two provinces in Canada. It took almost five years to resolve, millions of dollars and millions of energy, after having a positive decision in our favour. It doesn't make sense that we have an interprovincial trade agreement that is unenforceable, that's costly, that's cumbersome, bureaucratic, and I can keep going on the topic for a long, long time.
CGA Canada, with a number of other national professional organizations, have been strategizing on what it will take. We're very pleased to see in the Speech from the Throne that this government has committed to improving internal trade and has in fact indicated that it wishes to use its trade and commerce powers to do something about it.
And that something, as we have put forward, would be to legislate a set of open trade principles, where basically everything is on the table unless you take it off, and secondly, to create some kind of trade tribunal so that you have, at the end of a dispute resolution mechanism, some adjudication process that enables disputants to get a resolution to it and have some kind of monetary penalty attached to that, which we don't have currently.