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This was a decent explainer. In a nutshell…
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There are four categories of trade barriers in Canada: natural barriers such as geography, prohibitive barriers such as restrictions on the sale of alcohol, technical barriers such as vehicle weight standards and regulatory barriers such as licensing and paperwork requirements.
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The 2017 CFTA was intended to cut down on some of these barriers, but all provinces and territories negotiated exemptions for various reasons, ranging from different safety regulations across provinces, to different language requirements, to industry protectionism.
It’s not clear right now which barriers the feds can unilaterally eliminate (and whether we agree with all of them), but I guess we’ll find out within the next week or so.
Pretty much. There’s a strong argument that “eliminating barriers” may be synonymous with “deregulation,” which…could go badly.