WOODFINDEN: The Internal Trade Mirage

Real progress on dismantling interprovincial barriers has been made over the past year, but the hardest barriers remain intact and the federal-provincial momentum that delivered the easy wins is already flagging. If we're going to get big things built, we have to at least tackle the lowest hanging fruit.

Key Takeaways:

• The federal government has done most of what it can do unilaterally on internal trade. All 53 of Ottawa's CFTA exceptions have been removed; the Free Trade and Labour Mobility in Canada Act has been in force since January 1; the Canadian Mutual Recognition Agreement (CMRA) was signed by twelve of fourteen jurisdictions in November. By any reasonable historical comparison, this is real progress on a file that had been moving glacially since 1995.
• But the binding barriers have largely been left in place. The federal Act applies only to federal requirements, and so does not touch the provincial regulatory architecture that produces most of the friction businesses actually experience. The CMRA explicitly excludes food and alcohol, the two categories where consumer-facing barriers are most consequential. The labour mobility provisions in the federal Act apply only to occupations where federal and provincial authorizations overlap on the same role (land surveyors, locomotive engineers and the like). The provincial credentialing regimes that prevent a tradesperson, doctor or nurse from working across provincial lines remain entirely intact.
• The Committee on Internal Trade met nine times in 2025. It has met once in the first four months of 2026. If the agenda Canada has the most unilateral control over, the broadest political consensus behind, and the clearest fiscal upside from is already losing momentum, decision-makers should treat that as a leading indicator for everything harder the Carney government has promised to do.