This article originally appeared in The Hill Times.
By Ryan Manucha, April 27, 2026
Internal trade reform has experienced remarkable progress over the past 16 months, but the warning signs are flashing that momentum is waning. Though no reform period is infinite, Canada-United States Trade Minister Dominic LeBlanc and his fellow internal trade ministers from the 13 provinces and territories must keep pushing to realize the economic and productivity gains within reach.
To this end, LeBlanc and his counterparts need utter clear direction and key performance indicators from the very top: Canada’s first ministers.
Why is this? Internal trade reform requires not only dismantling entrenched regulatory silos, but also engaging thousands of public servants across 14 governments and innumerable departments and ministries to rethink decades of divergent regulatory practice where there can be good reasons for the status quo. Overcoming these challenges requires some premier and prime-ministerial muscle to create space both within a single government and across a confederation.
Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston offers a clear example of what a province can unlock with a highly engaged first minister unequivocally championing internal trade reform. Houston’s deep engagement in 2025 is why Nova Scotia was first in the nation last year to introduce comprehensive internal trade legislation, changed its building codes to unlock modular housing, and undertook trucking regulatory reform to bring down the cost of goods and transport, amongst other things.
The same goes for Ontario Premier Doug Ford whose driving force gave room for the “As of Right” model for labour mobility. This policy promises near-automatic mutual recognition for a wide swath of in-bound certified workers.
The upcoming Council of the Federation meeting in Charlottetown, P.E.I., is a critical opportunity for this country’s premiers to give well-defined and bold direction to internal trade ministers and their teams.
The importance of this direction is precisely what has driven progress since U.S. President Donald Trump returned to the White House. In 2025 alone, Canada’s senior-most body of internal trade ministers (the Committee on Internal Trade, or CIT), met nine times. This is remarkable for an entity that was meeting once-annually in years past. (There has only been one CIT meeting in the first four months of 2026, which itself indicates flagging momentum on the internal trade.)
The frequency of CIT meetings in 2025 yielded remarkable results for a file that in normal times moves glacially. One of last year’s biggest wins was the widespread activation of a simple concept to resolve several regulatory discrepancies in our confederation: mutual recognition. In its simplest form: if the good, worker, or service is approved in one province, that should be good enough for another. Mutual recognition is as close to a silver bullet for internal trade as we can get, but it lives or dies in its implementation.
Pan-Canadian collaboration also yielded several other wins. Canada’s governments aligned on a 30-day standard to clear credentialed workers from other provinces to work. They also inaugurated the British Columbia-led Canadian Mutual Recognition Agreement on the Sale of Goods, which generally allows businesses to sell their goods anywhere in Canada without meeting duplicative regulatory requirements. As well, Quebec and the federal government are co-leading a novel Domestic Trade Commissioners Network intended to better connect domestic buyers and sellers. Other more specific successes included the finalization of a financial services chapter to the Canadian Free Trade Agreement (CFTA), a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to enable most Canadians to order domestic alcohol directly to their doorsteps by May 2026, and progress on interprovincial trucking regulatory alignment.
Individual governments also made advancements outside of the CFTA system. A number of governments passed legislation to codify internal trade reform in statute. Additionally, 20 MOUs were inked amongst Canadian governments to further internal trade priorities. The impact of these MOUs and laws continues to rest on effective implementation.
Canada cannot afford to let internal trade reform progress abate. Interprovincial trade is worth $500-billion and fully within our control unlike the $1.2-trillion relationship with the U.S. CUSMA renegotiations are receiving immense time and resources. At the upcoming Council of the Federation meeting in Charlottetown, Canada’s premiers can choose to supply more of the muscle that’s driven 16 months of progress or let momentum stall.
Ryan Manucha, a contributor to the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, is the author of the award-winning book Booze, Cigarettes, and Constitutional Dust-Ups.
