International Trade Committee on April 28th, 2026

[Jason Groleau, Conservative, Beauce, QC]

Thank you.

Mr. Greer, we all agree that we need to increase and improve our interprovincial trade. We agree on that here. Let's be proactive.

In your opinion, what are the top three recommendations that this committee should quickly implement to support our businesses, in manufacturing and other sectors?

[Ryan Greer]

I'll start with number one, which I mentioned in my remarks. The role the federal government can play is around accountability and transparency. So much of this rests on what the provinces will do, the speed at which they'll do it and the mechanisms by which they'll do it.

For example, Alberta has made some progress in implementing the mutual recognition agreement, but it has built in a ministerial override for anything covered by the agreement. That creates a lot of political uncertainty. That creates a lot of opportunities for any government—that government or a future Alberta government—to back away from commitments in the MRA.

I believe the federal government could do some sort of national reporting scorecard. It could be independently managed. The government could have experts like Mr. Manucha and others help to account for progress that is being made on internal trade—where the gaps are, where carve-outs persist and where approaches are divergent in a way that makes it harder for companies or individuals to do business across borders. Of the many things, that's one thing the federal government could do that could substantively help incentivize the right behaviour.

It is a very complex issue. We're talking about dozens of different regulations and rules across all of these jurisdictions. We need to have a central place where Canadians and businesses can understand where progress is happening and where it's not.

[Jason Groleau, Conservative, Beauce, QC]

Thank you.

Ms. Senneville, I have the same question for you.

In your opinion, what are the top three recommendations that this committee should implement?

[Caroline Senneville]

Yes, we completely agree on the issue of transparency.

As to the other priorities, I would say protecting workers' rights and protecting the French language.

Our fear is that, given the variety of rules, there will be a bias and people will say that the least restrictive rule is the best. That's not always the case. There might be some less restrictive rules, but others could be more restrictive.

[Jason Groleau, Conservative, Beauce, QC]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Manucha, I have the same question for you.

In your opinion, what are the top three recommendations that this committee must implement in order to be proactive?

[Ryan Manucha]

Thank you very much for the question.

First, what is the power within this room? I'm not asking for provincial legislation. It's the federal government here. What's in the federal government's power?

One would be updating the Statutory Instruments Act to allow for consensus-based standards to act as satisfaction for compliance.

The next one would be about the Competition Bureau. Pass the legislation that started with the Senate. Pass legislation that gives them explicit institutional might over this.

The third one would be using the power of the purse to uphold the 30-day standard to recognize inbound credentials, a standard that every government in the Confederation has agreed to.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Fonseca, you have five minutes.

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses here in the Ottawa region.

Canada's Building Trades Unions is here having its advocacy days. I met with members yesterday. They talked about moving on these major projects, and they want to move at speed and scale.

I was speaking to a member of the IBEW, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. They are Red Seal members. They are able to work interprovincially. They were talking about working on the grid, building out the grid in B.C., working on nuclear plants in Ontario and working on wind projects in the Atlantic.

Do they have it right—how they're doing it—so that their labour mobility works with them? I know there are only so many Red Seal professions, but what can we learn from what Red Seal has done in the building trades so that we can take that into other labour markets?

Mr. Manucha.

[Ryan Manucha]

The Red Seal example is fantastic. It's about mobility across bounds, where the credentials are recognized.

I understand, at this committee and through some of the witness testimony, that there have been discussion and fear about health and safety and even cultural matters. That's totally legitimate. The beautiful thing about mutual recognition is that well-constructed mutual recognition creates an escape valve so that you don't have a race to the bottom. If a province starts going in one direction, the beautiful thing about what we're doing in activating this concept is that there is a fail-safe to say that something goes below the standard; it's not open season when it comes to regulatory safety.

The Red Seal program is a beautiful example of this in practice.

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Do we take the road map of the Red Seal and implement it with other professions and other—

[Ryan Manucha]

Yes. Take Australia, which did exactly what we've been doing for the past 16 months and trying to do. We've talked about it, and now it's about the doing of it.

Twenty occupations went to national licensing standards because the regulators were in constant communication with one another. They were forced to confront whether they were really different, how they were different and how they could bridge that gap, because it was an annoying difference. There are many ways to get to that, but mutual recognition is a good pathway to creating the common platforms that the EU and Australia show work.

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

Mr. Greer, you mentioned that in the last 18 months, more has been done on interprovincial trade than in the last number of decades. To continue that momentum, you speak about a scorecard. Can you give us some insight into that scorecard?

[Ryan Greer]

As I mentioned earlier, the hardest part for policy-makers, whether they are business owners, workers or other interested parties, is to understand and assess interprovincial trade barriers, because they are so multi-faceted and complex. There's been tremendous progress, but it's hard to know beneath the news release proclaiming mutual recognition what it includes, what it excludes, what steps remain, what commitments have been made and what pressure needs to be put on services so that the work in 2026 is productive and doesn't have a bunch of carve-outs.

It's very difficult to understand and navigate where progress is and isn't. We think something fairly simple and accessible could be pulled together that could really help demonstrate clearly to those of us in this room, as well as other stakeholders across the country, who's doing what at what schedule. Perhaps where there's been delay, it's the carve-outs, or people are taking an unnecessarily complex approach to mutual recognition. A patchwork version of mutual recognition that is still confusing for small businesses and workers can solve some problems, but it also creates other ones in that you're still trying to assess what you can do between provinces X and Y.

We think that's a fairly simple, transparent way the federal government can help incentivize the right behaviour but also make it clear to everybody where progress has been made and where it still remains.

[Peter Fonseca, Liberal, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

What I've heard so far from all of your testimony is that much of the friction that's still happening is mostly provincial. We can get rid of the federal barriers, but most of the labour or workforce would still be under provincial jurisdiction. I know that the provinces have many barriers in the regulated professions, and that is a challenge.

How would the provinces deal with those regulated professions, like the College of Physicians and Surgeons, the lawyers, etc.? How would they address that? It seems like that's been a big barrier for a long time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Give a brief answer, sir.

[Ryan Greer]

I'll be very quick.

If there are organizations anywhere in the country that seek to preserve gaps or differences, they ought to explain why something else being done in another part of the country is unsafe or insufficient. It's not clear to me that in any province, any regulated profession is operating in a way that is endangering Canadians and workers in a substantive way. If that's happening, then we ought to have a conversation about what those standards are. More broadly, we need to push for alignment as much as possible.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you very much, Mr. Greer.

We have Mr. Savard-Tremblay for two and a half minutes, please.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot—Acton, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Ms. Senneville, in your opinion, should certain sectors definitely be excluded from any mutual recognition efforts?

[Caroline Senneville]

The sectors that are already excluded are agriculture, fisheries, aquaculture, forestry and public monopolies. I'm thinking in particular of Hydro-Québec, the Société des alcools du Québec and the Société québécoise du cannabis.

The exclusions should remain in place.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot—Acton, QC]

The exclusions remain excluded. That's fine.

Do you think there is a risk of a race to the bottom if one province—and we know our province is a strong advocate of the social safety net—accepts lower standards than other provinces?

You mentioned safety as an example. Are there others?

[Caroline Senneville]

There are risks for the environment and for labour standards.

Also, if Canada removes internal trade barriers or makes the rules more flexible, the rules could also become more flexible for international trade as well. That could create economic problems in Canada.

I'll say it again. We're told that trade barriers are very costly. However, when we ask business owners why they won't sell in remote regions, they say that it's because of transportation costs. That really is the number one issue. Regulations rank much lower in the list of priorities.

We need to work on that front, but we have to consider that Canada will miss the boat if provinces and territories only agree on that and not on the rest of our economy.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot—Acton, QC]

Do I still have som time left, Madam Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

You have 50 seconds.

[Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay, Bloc, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot—Acton, QC]

Okay, that's great.

It also seems to me that Quebec is ahead of the rest of Canada when it comes to consumer protection regulations. That's another example that we could give.

[Caroline Senneville]

Absolutely.

Citizens are not only workers. They're consumers too, and that's part of the reality back home.