Canada can trade with the world. It’s time we trade with ourselves.
A potato from Prince Edward Island can still reach Boston faster than Quebec. That’s not accidental. It’s a policy choice.
Canada just passed Bill C-5, the One Canadian Economy Act. It removes federal roadblocks and sets the table for freer movement of goods and workers across the country. Royal Assent came on June 26, 2025; consultations to implement the Free Trade and Labour Mobility in Canada Act started last week.
The federal government has also removed its own exemptions from the Canadian Free Trade Agreement, the internal trade deal that governs how goods, services, and workers move across provinces. The question now is whether provinces will do the same.
Why this urgency? Look at the world outside our borders. The United States has ratcheted up tariffs on Canadian imports not covered by the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). China just slapped a 75.8% provisional anti-dumping duty on Canadian canola, effectively closing a C$5-billion market overnight. When external doors slam, a unified internal market should be our shock absorber. Right now, it isn’t.
Why can Canadian agriculture sell halfway around the world more easily than across a provincial line? The answer is a dense web of overlapping and inconsistent provincial rules:
Food safety, labelling and inspection
Licensing, permitting and innovation barriers
Supply management, monopolies, quotas, and marketing boards
Personal import limits and direct shipment prohibitions
Environmental, water, and biosecurity
Labour mobility and occupational regulation
Infrastructure and transportation
Other
These act as barriers to trade, similar to the way tariffs do. They suppress interprovincial trade, raise costs, and limit growth, especially for small and medium-sized firms that can’t afford multiple compliance regimes.
The cost is substantial. Independent estimates have put the hit to the national GDP between
$50–$130 billion annually, dragging on productivity, choice, and affordability. In food, duplication is everywhere: a beef processor meeting federal export rules can still face different provincial inspection expectations; a dairy producer encounters price and access distortions baked into how supply-management interacts with provincial systems. Consumers pay with higher grocery bills. Farmers pay with tighter margins and rising input costs. Canada pays with lost competitiveness.
Canada was built on the idea of one market. Section 121 of the Constitution promised that goods should be “admitted free” between provinces; our patchwork is the reality. One country, thirteen rulebooks.\
Here’s what a “One Canada” agriculture market requires, grounded in my research:
Mutual recognition with enforceable rules. If a product is lawful to sell in one province under standards that meet the federal export bar, it should move everywhere in Canada. No re-inspection, no relabelling, no new licence. Put timelines and default approvals in regulation so recognition isn’t theoretical.
Harmonize the few things that matter most. Start with food safety, inspection protocols, and core transport rules. Don’t harmonize everything; harmonize the checkpoints that slow trade and add costswithout adding protection. Use national reference standards to keep our export credibility intact.
One-and-done oversight. One license. One inspection. One audit cycle. Have provinces accept each other’s results where federal standards apply, and publish joint guidance so SMEs can follow a single playbook.
Modernize supply management at the margins. Keep stability for farmers, but make quotas and marketing board rules more portable across provinces so processors can scale to national demand without administrative friction.
Build the tariff shock plan now. When a major export market suddenly closes, the product should redirect across Canada within days, not months. Pre-clear routing, inspection equivalency, and transport flexibility should occur in advance. The tariffs on canola from China are the unplanned test of whether our internal market can absorb external shocks.
Critics will say provinces won’t give up control. They don’t have to. This is about designing cooperation that protects legitimate objectives while scrapping duplicative processes. It’s also about sequencing. Ottawa took action: Bill C-5 is law; federal CFTA exceptions are gone; a Federal Action Plan and data hub are live. The next moves are provincial, beginning with agriculture because it touches affordability every single week at checkout.
Ottawa should set a clear deadline. Make mutual recognition the default after a short review period. Publish an annual scorecard by sector and province so Canadians can see who’s lowering costs and who’s not. Tie the new federal agriculture and infrastructure dollars to measurable reductions in internal barriers. And stop subsidizing the status quo.
This is the reality facing farmers and families. It’s a grocery bill. It’s whether a red-meat plant can serve Edmonton and Halifax off the same inspection cycle and save money on reinspections. It’s whether a small processor needs three labels for one jar. It’s whether, when the world turns hostile, Canada can turn inward efficiently and keep farmers selling and families fed.
We’ve signed the global deals. Now we need to keep the promise at home. One Canada isn’t a slogan. It’s the difference between resilience and fragility.
Let’s finish the job.
By Haris Ahmad, Master of Public Policy
Based on capstone research supervised by Dr. Trevor Tombe, University of Calgary, August 2025