How Canada’s internal trade reform echoes 1864 — and what it will take to finish the job |
When U.S. President Donald Trump was inaugurated in January 2025 for a second term, his words were unequivocal: America would once again consider itself a growing nation — one that increases its wealth and expands its territory. Canada was not mentioned. It didn’t need to be.
Within hours, reports emerged of an imminent 25-per-cent tariff on Canadian goods. Within weeks, the threat to annex Canada as the 51st state had moved from campaign bluster to a presidential talking point. Within months, economic pressure was brought to bear on our country in a manner not experienced in living memory.
Our trade and national-security policies had been built for decades on the assumption of a friendly, economically aligned southern neighbour. That assumption was not a fact. It was a bet — and the game had just changed.
In answer, Canada did something it hadn’t managed in generations. It began to act as a country. Although internal trade regulation might seem an unlikely candidate for patriotic inspiration, a transformational coalition — one that many had long thought politically impossible — started taking shape almost immediately.
Since Trump’s second term began, Ottawa has eliminated all 53 of its exemptions in the Canadian Free Trade Agreement(CFTA).
Provinces and territories have collectively removed a further 55 non-federal exceptions, while seven provinces have passed mutual-recognition legislation toward a pan-Canadian as-of-right licensing model for regulated professions, including Ontario via bilateral economic co-operation agreements with every other province and territory. Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland-Labrador are the exceptions.
the Canadian Federation of Independent Business noted in its Interprovincial Cooperation Report Card last June: “More progress has been made on removing trade barriers within Canada in the past six months than in the eight years since the CFTA was signed.”
Prime Minister Mark Carney put the spirit of it plainly at Davos, though his audience was global. “Collective investments in resilience are cheaper than everyone building their own fortresses. Shared standards reduce fragmentation. Complementarities are positive sum.”
He was speaking of middle powers and the fracturing international order. However, the description was also apt for what Canada had already started at home.
There’s an echo here of something older and more deliberate. Canada was quite literally made for this moment. As early as 1864, in my hometown of Charlottetown, the Fathers of Confederation were espousing the merits of a great coalition formed in direct response to American belligerence and........