OTTAWA — If federal and provincial negotiators are to be believed, Canada is moving closer to a deal to reduce or eliminate most interprovincial trade barriers.
Jim Lahoar, an Agriculture Canada official involved in the negotiations, said an eventual agreement could force changes in technical regulations that have impeded movement of some food products between borders.
In late January after a federal-provincial ministers’ meeting on the general issue of interprovincial trade barriers, it was announced that a draft agreement is supposed to be ready by the end of March for final agreement by the end of June.
Read Also
Alberta crop diversification centres receive funding
$5.2 million of provincial funding pumped into crop diversity research centres
“That is what we are working towards, although barriers won’t be removed by then and probably not for a year after,” said Lahoar. “We’re working to set deadlines on when they should be eliminated.”
Pushing for a deal
Debates about reducing domestic trade barriers have been on-and-off for years, but this time both levels of government say they will reach a conclusion.
Lahoar said one difference this time is that international trade liberalizing agreements signed by the federal government mean foreign product soon could have more access to the Canadian market than some product from other provinces.
And some provincial rules, such as Ontario and Quebec requirements that margarine not be butter-colored, could be hard to enforce when foreign imports begin to arrive.
For the agriculture industry, the stakes are not huge but there will be some benefit, according to industry spokesmen.
“There aren’t a lot of barriers in the meat industry but we support this initiative,” said Canadian Meat Council president John Lauer of J.M. Schneider Inc. of Kitchener, Ont. “It will enhance the competitiveness of the industry across the country.”
One industry issue at stake in the talks is a rule that product from provincially-licensed packing plants cannot cross provincial boundaries.
Canadian Federation of Agriculture executive director Sally Rutherford took the same view.
“I don’t believe that removing any one big technical barrier will save farmers or the industry millions of dollars,” she said. “But it is a cumulative thing that really does matter.”
She said it could also stop a proliferation of technical domestic trade barriers in the future. In some cases, municipalities have been trying to set rules about the quality of food that can be sold in local stores, for example.
The negotiators are not discussing barriers included in supply management rules, according to Lahoar.
But the dairy industry says there could be at least one major impact of any deal on provincial barriers.
Provincial dairy regulations now prohibit movement of fluid milk across borders. These rules likely would be dropped to allow table milk to cross provincial borders.
Other trade-disrupting rules that could fall victim to a deal include prohibitions on moving bulk fruits and vegetables between provinces unless there is a provable shortage.
