Regional policies are creating economic barriers and challenges
Canada is well known for being, geographically speaking, one of the largest nations on earth.
To fly from Victoria, B.C. to St. John’s, Nfld. would take more than seven hours if a direct flight existed from Canada’s western edge to its eastern tip. A journey from Lake Erie to the North Pole would be similarly epic.
Our sheer geographic size brings with it the cultural and linguistic diversity that characterizes Canada in the eyes of its own citizens and people around the world.
This is to be celebrated. Less celebratory is the downside to our many and distinct regions: their tendency to engage in small-minded economic regionalism that makes us all worse off.
It is often said that there is not one “national economy” in Canada, but a series of regional or provincial ones. This is true, in that different parts of Canada experience differing economic fundamentals and distinct challenges and opportunities at a given time, and that residents of Saskatchewan may be more likely to engage in trade with Manitobans than Newfoundlanders.
However, our Constitution explicitly grants the federal government the power over “the regulation of trade and commerce,” creating — at least in the minds of Constitutional scholars — a unified Canadian economic space. The reality is far from the ideal laid out in our founding documents.
Canada’s provinces and territories have enjoyed significant responsibilities and powers under that same Constitution. Without the grand bargain that granted vast taxation and policy making powers to our subnational governments in the 19th century, arguably Canada would not have been born.
I’m not going to engage in that debate. But the statement that modern-day provinces wield vast Constitutional powers is not one that will find a great deal of controversy.
These provincial powers recognize the many regions of Canada and their distinct cultures and policy-making needs. But they also contribute to trade and mobility barriers and the outright destruction of prosperity for Canadian citizens everywhere in the country.
The National Capital Region is a perfect microcosm of our Canada-wide challenges with regionalism, straddling the border between our two largest regions.
I live in Ottawa in the province of Ontario. Though I can walk to Quebec from my house (insert Sarah Palin joke here), I cannot legally purchase beer on the Quebecois side of the border and bring it home, owing to powerful provincial-level liquor control boards that jealously guard their fiefdoms.
Adding insult to injury, the beer purchasing experience on the Ontario side is painfully inadequate and expensive. It’s because of draconian alcohol laws and the existence of The Beer Store monopoly, which provides its captive-as-zoo-creatures customers a retail experience too excruciating to describe in family-friendly terms.
Similarly, a friend who lives on the Quebec side recently asked for a recommendation for a house painter.
But restrictive labour codes in Quebec meant that the Ontario-based contractor refused to take work in La Belle Province, a mere three minute drive from my house. My friend on the Quebec side of the river still languishes in a home with a paint job from another era.
The same story can be told across Canada.
Teachers trained in one jurisdiction can’t move to another for work, so onerous is the licensing regime of Province X or Territory Y, as though a graduate from a Manitoba teachers college was trained under the standards of another planet and couldn’t possibly teach your average 12-year-old New Brunswicker. Until recently, winemakers in British Columbia couldn’t sell cases of their products to visitors who came from another part of the same country.
It all makes a mockery of the notion that somehow Canada is a single economic entity.
In many ways there is a freer movement of goods, people and capital between countries, say, in the European Union, than between our own regions. They are eager to erect artificial barriers between Canadians who are just trying to earn a living, paint their guest room or bring home a case of Pinot Noir.
Every region is guilty of this in its own way. It’s all so…provincial.
Meanwhile, back in Constitution-land, mostly defined as the rarified air of the academies and tweed-jacketed lecture halls that fret over such issues, the Trade and Commerce Clause of our Constitution is said to lay “dormant.” It’s neutered by successive federal governments terrified of upsetting provincial bosses with talk of actually following the Constitution to create a Canadian economic space.
As the new federal government pursues its agenda to break down the many barriers between our regions, it should not be afraid to exercise its Constitutional prerogative in the pursuit of One Canadian Economy. What we have now is far from it.
