Thank you so much.
On a sunny October day in 2012, retiree Gerard Comeau travelled the two hours from his house in New Brunswick to Quebec. Prices were cheaper, he's a rational economic actor and he was on his quarterly beer run. Mr. Comeau had no idea that this seemingly innocuous trip would land him in front of the Supreme Court and would catalyze a national conversation about the state of domestic trade. On re-entering New Brunswick with his haul, the RCMP detained and fined him and confiscated all his booze for the distinctly Canadian offence of having too much alcohol in his trunk when coming back from another province.
Internal trade barriers are a feature of our constitutional set-up; they're not a bug. They are the natural by-product of a system that assigns substantial authority to our provinces. Mr. Comeau's run-in with the law symbolizes our nation's long-standing struggle to achieve economic unity within a federal structure. Internal trade barriers are more than just liquor limits, and we do not have to accept them as fate.
Let's use another example: standards. At the dawn of Confederation, the distance between the two rails of a railway track in the Maritimes was different from that in Upper and Lower Canada. It was four feet, eight inches for one, and five feet, six inches for another, which meant that at intercolonial frontiers, operators had to move goods and people from one railcar to another simply because of a difference in standards. That is an internal trade barrier, and it added money, time and extreme inefficiency.
Internal trade barriers lead to deeply embedded domestic regulatory patchworks—like the railway track width differential—which ultimately harm Canadian productivity and economic competitiveness. The year 2025 saw massive strides on internal trade reform—an incredible intergovernmental collaboration—but the job is far from done. It is relatively easy to table legislation and to sign MOUs. The challenge is in implementation, and the hard work really is just beginning.
The remaining divergences are wide-ranging. To name just a few, we're talking about national safety code implementation for trucking carriers, securities regulations, electrical codes, occupational health and safety rules, building codes and fall safety training programs.
Again, that's just tip of the iceberg. I co-authored a piece with Professor Trevor Tombe, out of the University of Calgary, and we found that a patchwork in rules and regulations facing trucking added 8.3% to the cost of freight rates—that's a $1.6-billion drag on the Canadian economy—with divergences on everything from driver qualifications for long combination vehicles to mutual recognition of farm licence plates and the definition of “sunrise” and “sunset” among provinces.
Now here are some credible, politically saleable and implementable federal actions.
First, Parliament should update the Statutory Instruments Act to require federal regulators to rely on consensus-based standards wherever possible—I've written about this with Senator Colin Deacon—as standards advance faster than any one government's regulators can keep up to. The EU has embraced this with great success. Think about the divergences in the EU.
Second, the House should pass Senate bill Bill S-239, which is being introduced by Senator Marty Klyne and which strengthens and makes more clear the Competition Bureau's ability to study and report on internal trade. Doing so would institutionalize internal trade reform, helping it endure beyond the present moment. Australia did something very similar with great success.
Third—it sounds like the two Ryans here are of like mind—the federal government should condition labour market development agreement funding on whether provinces and territories publicly demonstrate compliance with the 30-day standard for credential recognition. Canada's governments all have agreed to a 30-day standard to recognize inbound workers. Disclosure is the only the way to audit compliance, and money is going to help.
I'll end with this. I watched the committee testimony from Minister LeBlanc when he was here. There was a lot of talk about the relationship with the U.S. Two-way goods and services trade with the U.S. is $1.2 trillion. Internal trade is $500 billion. CUSMA is receiving a ton of time, attention and resources, and internal trade—and I thank the committee for its work on it—should continue to be treated with seriousness as well.
Thank you so much.