As talk about interprovincial trade barriers continues across Canada, the Canadian Trucking Alliance says that the trucking industry is ahead of the curve in the conversation about making Canadian trade more accessible and profitable.
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U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canadian goods — those already announced and those potentially looming — have triggered both a political and philosophical discussion examining how Canada can trade its own goods more effectively within its own borders.
“The discussion on tariffs began to accelerate the conversation on interprovincial trade barriers, and the whole topic of productivity and efficiency in the Canadian economy and the supply chain,” Stephen Laskowski, president of the Canadian Trucking Alliance, said in a recent interview.
But that discussion had already begun in the trucking industry. In October 2023, the Canadian Trucking Alliance released a report entitled Interprovincial Trade Barriers in Trucking, which they presented to the federal government.
“Anytime a truck crosses a provincial or an international border, they become federally regulated,” Laskowski said. “But much of the jurisdictional issues, what we’ll call the enforcement of operations, where the rubber meets the road, most of it is done at the provincial level.”
In its 2023 report, the Canadian Trucking Alliance outlined issues it felt impacted the efficiency of transporting goods across Canada.
Some of those included variations in winter road maintenance standards in different provinces, varying access to rest stops for drivers, the variation in training standards for long combination vehicle (LCV) programs, oversize and overweight sector issues, national standards for bridge height and minimum clearance requirements for construction zones.
Other points of discussion are the lack of a centralized system for motor carrier information, the “patchwork” of weight regulations on rural roads in different jurisdictions during springtime, and the inconsistency access to cell service.
And, the Canadian Trucking Alliance would like to see initiatives to increase access to “accurate and timely data” related to the trucking industry, something they said is significantly lacking.
Laskowski admits that these issues have remained on desks for years because they’re not very exciting on the surface.
“They’re not sexy issues that typically a federal minister or a premier would want to look at,” he said. “But now, as a society, for numerous reasons, including the threat of tariffs, we are looking at ways that we can quickly become efficient and more productive. These are the ways.”
Wayne Cooney has worked in the trucking industry for more than 30 years. He is the president of Cooney Transit, Inc., a company that operates out of the Kingston and Belleville regions and runs approximately 40 trucks that move goods between Ontario and Quebec and into U.S. states like Nebraska, Ohio, Indiana and Michigan.
His trucks routinely move polymer, aluminum, household appliances and agricultural products like soybeans.
Among a host of small issues that interrupt the flow of trucking traffic across provincial borders, as an example he said that there are differences between regulations and permitting processes in Ontario and Quebec that slow down freight between the two provinces for his drivers and customers.
“We don’t have uniformity with the Weights and Measures Act,” he said. “For example, we haul a lot of B-trains, which is two trailers together.”
Crossing with a B-train configuration from Ontario to Quebec, drivers face potential penalties if they are running the maximum weight and dimensions permitted in Ontario.
“When we cross over the border into Quebec, they have different weight laws and dimensions. So right off the bat, we have to have all this different kind of equipment.”
Mutual recognition pilot project
Less than a year after the Canadian Trucking Alliance released its report, in Sept. 2024 a coalition of representatives from 11 provinces and territories entered into an agreement to launch a pilot project to mutually recognize regulatory requirements in the trucking sector during a Committee on Internal Trade meeting on Prince Edward Island.
Under the new pilot, Ontario, Nova Scotia, Manitoba, Prince Edward Island, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Newfoundland and Labrador, Northwest Territories, Yukon and Nunavut agreed to “recognize 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,” a release from 2024 stated.
The project is the first of its kind on this scale in Canada, and the federal government said at the time of the announcement that experts believed adopting mutual recognition as a means to reduce barriers to internal trade could help boost Canada’s economy by up to $200 billion per year.
Laskowski, who said that the move to initiate this pilot project showed a proactive approach by both federal and provincial governments, believes that the willingness to sit at the table and find the beginning of a solution to an interprovincial barrier is a great omen for other sectors in the country, and a template for moving forward on breaking down internal trade barriers.
“The trucking industry serves all aspects of the economy, and so if provinces and the federal government can learn to develop a process to deal with the issues in trucking, then the lessons learned in the trucking industry could be applied to other sectors,” Laskowski said.
Long before U.S. tariffs on regularly-traded Canadian goods became a real threat, the federal government had begun working on breaking down other interprovincial trade barriers, beginning with the 2017 Canadian Free Trade Agreement.
In subsequent years the government has worked to ease restrictions in industries dealing with timber, construction, food and drugs, occupational health and more.
Some of the trucking industry-related improvements made since 2017 include national standardization on truck tire requirements, commercial vehicle driver hours of service regulations and entry-level commercial driver training.
The mutual recognition pilot project is the latest in the government’s timeline on advancing internal trade.
In the federal government announcement released on Sept. 26, 2024 about the pilot project, Anita Anand, Treasury Board president and Minister of Transport, spoke to the importance of reducing “economic friction” and promoting co-operation among Canadian industries.
“By working together with our provincial and territorial colleagues, we can help improve productivity and create conditions for increased trade across the country,” she said in a prepared statement at the time. “Today, our provincial and territorial colleagues are taking an important step in mutual recognition of regulatory requirements to enable trucks and their goods to move across Canada more efficiently and effectively. This pilot project is a perfect example of the results we can achieve by working together for the good of our economy, our businesses and all Canadians.”
‘We have a game plan’
According to the Canadian Trucking Alliance, trucking is the dominant mode of freight transportation in Canada, moving approximately 90 per cent of all consumer products and food, and almost two thirds of Canada’s trade with the United States.
While Laskowski feels good about the direction that provinces are headed, he wants to see partners ramp up efforts to smooth the way for trucks carrying Canada’s goods all over the country.
“We have a game plan in the trucking industry, and our message to all levels of government is, ‘This is great. Let’s accelerate the game plan, and let’s expand it,’” he said.
Cooney, whose own business faces potential financial losses with a change in the flow of goods from Canada to the U.S., thanks to tariffs, believes in Canadians’ desire to take care of their own.
“Even if there isn’t a hostile threat from the U.S., why would we not want to grow our economy and trade amongst ourselves?” he asked. “It just seems like a no-brainer to me.
“We’re all Canadians, from one coast to the other, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting to support ourselves. I think it’s foolish if we don’t.”
The Whig-Standard reached out to the federal government’s Privy Council Office for an update on the mutual recognition pilot project, but did not receive a comment before deadline.