Again, I think there are probably a number of issues. One is that these issues have been identified for many years. When we did the initial research talking to the business community—we released our initial report describing the barriers in 2016—a lot of the firms identified that in certain specific cases there were big issues that impeded their market. In many cases they just found a way to get used to it.
Although it's a challenge for them, and it prevents them, maybe, from having an Atlantic-wide strategy, and it impedes their efficiency in moving vehicles from one province to another and being able to deploy personnel and equipment, they have generally just had to live with that situation. In some ways, I think, the business community sees and recognizes it as an issue, but it's not their most pressing concern. Issues around NAFTA, the exchange rate, labour shortages and other things would be top of mind compared with regulatory issues.
The other practical challenge is the commitment of the four provinces to work together to resolve these issues. We saw some positive steps in commitments by the four premiers back in 2015-16 to establish a new office to work on these issues. They have been making progress. Our concern is that it's easy to say we're going to do this, but to actually do this is a big challenge.
One of the issues is that there are so many regulatory issues. Even in transportation, as we talk to firms, there are issues around vehicle weights and dimensions. There are oversize or overload permits, and different rates of fuel taxes. Just within the transportation field we had a number of issues identified to us. It's a huge agenda, therefore, just to start to work on those as well as labour standards and health and safety. That's partly why in our proposal we were recommending essentially a “negative list” approach. We will ensure that firms can operate seamlessly across the region and then take exceptions on areas where we can't yet make that adjustment.
The size of the task and the willingness of political leaders to make those adjustments and start to work as a region in practical ways rather than maintaining their own provincial policies and regulations, I think that's probably one of the biggest challenges.