Ottawa-Ontario is one of 10 provinces and territories that will participate in a pilot project to reduce barriers to trucks carrying freight across the country by easing requirements on the vehicle’s size and mutually recognizing regulatory requirements in the trucking sector.

That agreement was reached at a meeting in Charlottetown of the Committee on Internal Trade (CIT). Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc and Transport Minister Anita Anand said the pilot project will be cochaired by the federal and Newfoundland governments.

LeBlanc said “We collectively took a critical step towards liberalizing trade across our country and strengthening internal trade. What we learn from this pilot will also lay the foundation for broader use of mutual recognition across sectors and jurisdictions, to ultimately make it easier to do business across Canada.”

More than $500 billion worth of goods and services moves across the country — equal to almost 19 per cent of Canada's gross domestic product. Last year, one-third of Canadian businesses participated in internal trade by buying or selling goods across provincial and territorial borders.

In addition to Ontario, Nova Scotia, Manitoba, Prince Edward Island, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Newfoundland, Northwest Territories, Yukon and Nunavut are participating in the project, which is a crucial aspect to Canada's productivity and affordability, the ministers said.

Mutual recognition agreements in key sectors, such as transportation and trucking, have the potential to boost Canada's productivity and economic growth,” the ministers said. “Experts forecast that adopting mutual recognition as a means to reduce barriers to internal trade could increase Canada's economy by $200 billion per year.

“Under this trucking pilot, participating provinces and territories will commit to recognizing each other's regulatory requirements, even where differences exist, such as oversized vehicle signage requirements, to allow trucks and the goods they carry to move across Canada more effectively, without compromising safety and security measures. The pilot, the first of its kind on this scale within Canada, will help governments test and measure what can be achieved through mutual recognition and will help drive future work in other important sectors of the economy, including labour mobility.”

Under the Federal Action Plan to Strengthen Internal Trade, the government has created a Canadian Internal Trade Data and Information Hub that provides open and accessible information on domestic trade and trade barriers in key economic sectors. Progress at reducing regulatory barriers has been secured in a variety of other areas.

The Treasury Board is setting up a working group to examine productivity in Canada's public sector to inform the government's economic plan. The working group will be comprised of various experts from academia, think tanks, private and public sectors and will engage with unions. It will examine the delivery of services to Canadians and the role of technology in helping address barriers to achieving greater efficiencies for Canadians and businesses. The working group's mandate and terms of reference will be finalized and made public in the coming weeks.

This news item prepared for National Newswatch