Stupid question, but why does Canada have internal trade barriers, or is it just like regulation about what can be transported across provincial lines?
this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2025
184 points (98.4% liked)
Canada
8435 readers
2989 users here now
What's going on Canada?
Related Communities
๐ Meta
๐บ๏ธ Provinces / Territories
- Alberta
- British Columbia
- Manitoba
- New Brunswick
- Newfoundland and Labrador
- Northwest Territories
- Nova Scotia
- Nunavut
- Ontario
- Prince Edward Island
- Quebec
- Saskatchewan
- Yukon
๐๏ธ Cities / Local Communities
- Calgary (AB)
- Edmonton (AB)
- Greater Sudbury (ON)
- Guelph (ON)
- Halifax (NS)
- Hamilton (ON)
- Kootenays (BC)
- London (ON)
- Mississauga (ON)
- Montreal (QC)
- Nanaimo (BC)
- Oceanside (BC)
- Ottawa (ON)
- Port Alberni (BC)
- Regina (SK)
- Saskatoon (SK)
- Thunder Bay (ON)
- Toronto (ON)
- Vancouver (BC)
- Vancouver Island (BC)
- Victoria (BC)
- Waterloo (ON)
- Windsor (ON)
- Winnipeg (MB)
Sorted alphabetically by city name.
๐ Sports
Hockey
- Main: c/Hockey
- Calgary Flames
- Edmonton Oilers
- Montrรฉal Canadiens
- Ottawa Senators
- Toronto Maple Leafs
- Vancouver Canucks
- Winnipeg Jets
Football (NFL): incomplete
Football (CFL): incomplete
Baseball
Basketball
Soccer
- Main: /c/CanadaSoccer
- Toronto FC
๐ป Schools / Universities
- BC | UBC (U of British Columbia)
- BC | SFU (Simon Fraser U)
- BC | VIU (Vancouver Island U)
- BC | TWU (Trinity Western U)
- ON | UofT (U of Toronto)
- ON | UWO (U of Western Ontario)
- ON | UWaterloo (U of Waterloo)
- ON | UofG (U of Guelph)
- ON | OTU (Ontario Tech U)
- QC | McGill (McGill U)
Sorted by province, then by total full-time enrolment.
๐ต Finance, Shopping, Sales
- Personal Finance Canada
- BAPCSalesCanada
- Canadian Investor
- Buy Canadian
- Quebec Finance
- Churning Canada
๐ฃ๏ธ Politics
- General:
- Federal Parties (alphabetical):
- By Province (alphabetical):
๐ Social / Culture
Rules
- Keep the original title when submitting an article. You can put your own commentary in the body of the post or in the comment section.
Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca also apply here. See the sidebar on the homepage: lemmy.ca
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
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.
If we're going to change our building codes we should mandate that lumber be cut in metric.
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.
or is it just like regulation about what can be transported across provincial lines?
That's a big part of it - this is a decent explainer.
Iโm absolutely thrilled about this. Words cannot express.