Stupid question, but why does Canada have internal trade barriers, or is it just like regulation about what can be transported across provincial lines?
It’s mostly each province having different regulations, standards, definitions, or licensing bodies around things that are provincially governed.
Most of it is businesses not being willing to jump through thr hoops in all provinces, or those hoops making the end product overly expensive if sold in a national format.
Yeah kinda. I don’t think it’s required to have bilingual labeling in all provinces in Canada but Doritos are “Zesty Mordant” across the country because it’s too much of a pain in the ass to have different labeling in different provinces.
But there are many things that are traditionally produced and used locally where that’s not the case. Every province has different building codes and building materials made in one province may not be up to code in another province.
Agriculture has similar issues.
A lot of it is just it doesn’t have the required label from a particular provincial official that prevents something from being sold in a province it wasn’t made it. Just stupid red tape stuff.
We must also keep in mind that Canada is so vast that provinces end up having their own interests to defend. Ontario’s workers can’t just uproot their lives and move to BC because their industry moved there, it’s a 3 to 5 days drive! So Ontario has an incentive to protect their jobs even if it means that BC has less jobs… Now open borders and make everything free-for-all and it might put a ton of jobs at risk from products from other provinces entering markets they never had access to and starting to compete with the local market…
Provinces might be allies, but they’re in competition with one another as well…
If you were there back in the day you will remember the fight against globalization, more open borders is a great way to keep wages down because employers can just move their business wherever labor is cheapest. Well, the same thing applies by doing it inside Canada without first making sure that labor conditions are the same in all provinces and right now it’s not the case.
Stupid question, but why does Canada have internal trade barriers, or is it just like regulation about what can be transported across provincial lines?
It’s mostly each province having different regulations, standards, definitions, or licensing bodies around things that are provincially governed.
Most of it is businesses not being willing to jump through thr hoops in all provinces, or those hoops making the end product overly expensive if sold in a national format.
Don’t they have a “California effect” on Canada? Where everyone just comply with the highest standard just to be able to sell everywhere
Yeah kinda. I don’t think it’s required to have bilingual labeling in all provinces in Canada but Doritos are “Zesty Mordant” across the country because it’s too much of a pain in the ass to have different labeling in different provinces.
But there are many things that are traditionally produced and used locally where that’s not the case. Every province has different building codes and building materials made in one province may not be up to code in another province.
Agriculture has similar issues.
A lot of it is just it doesn’t have the required label from a particular provincial official that prevents something from being sold in a province it wasn’t made it. Just stupid red tape stuff.
We must also keep in mind that Canada is so vast that provinces end up having their own interests to defend. Ontario’s workers can’t just uproot their lives and move to BC because their industry moved there, it’s a 3 to 5 days drive! So Ontario has an incentive to protect their jobs even if it means that BC has less jobs… Now open borders and make everything free-for-all and it might put a ton of jobs at risk from products from other provinces entering markets they never had access to and starting to compete with the local market…
Provinces might be allies, but they’re in competition with one another as well…
That sounds insanely annoying.
I’m not sure why you’re using the word annoying there…
It’s all stuff that must be taken into consideration where changing trade rules…
Sounds like a great way to keep wages down and prices up.
If you were there back in the day you will remember the fight against globalization, more open borders is a great way to keep wages down because employers can just move their business wherever labor is cheapest. Well, the same thing applies by doing it inside Canada without first making sure that labor conditions are the same in all provinces and right now it’s not the case.
That’s a big part of it - this is a decent explainer.