In the words of former Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz, Canada’s failure to remove interprovincial trade barriers is like “free money lying on the sidewalk but nobody will bend over and pick it up.”
U.S. tariffs, the Bank of Canada estimates—if they do come in their threatened 25 percent form on all Canadian products—would wipe out 3.4 percent to 4.2 percent from Canada’s GDP. Removing interprovincial trade barriers, meanwhile, could increase GDP by 3.8 percent, according to a Deloitte Canada analysis using International Monetary Fund findings.
