How much can free trade between provinces help Canada’s economy?

As talk of U.S. tariffs continues to dominate headlines, one potential homegrown way to mitigate the effects keeps cropping up: interprovincial trade. But just how much impact would removing or reducing the existing barriers to trade between provinces actually have? John McNally, Economist and Senior Policy Advisor at Scotiabank, is our guest to tell us what the main roadblocks to interprovincial trade are, what the newly-elected Liberal government plans to do about the issue and give us a reality check on just how much of an impact reducing these barriers might have on the Canadian economy.  

For legal disclosures, please visit http://bit.ly/socialdisclaim and www.gbm.scotiabank.com/disclosures 

 

Key moments this episode: 

1:29 – How realistic are the estimates of the potential impact of reducing interprovincial trade barriers on GDP ? 

2:01 – How much trade currently happens within Canada? And how important is it to the economy? 

3:30 – How much of Canada's international trade is with the U.S.?

4:36 – Which sectors do interprovincial trade barriers impact the most?  

10:04 – Some examples of the current barriers to trading between provinces 

12:31 – How labour mobility is affected by interprovincial barriers 

14:56 – How difficult is it to actually reduce these barriers?  

17:12 – What about the EU? Is there anything we can learn from their model? 

18:47 – What difference has the Canadian Free Trade Agreement made and is that something that can be built on? 

20:40 – What has Mark Carney promised on the campaign trail around interprovincial trade? 

24:34 – What’s a realistic boost to GDP that we might expect to see if we reduce trade barriers between provinces? And what’s stopping us from getting there? 

28:10 – John gives a sense of the scale of trade between provinces vs. trade with the U.S. 

30:42 – Why lowering interprovincial trade barriers isn't a silver bullet