Interprovincial Trade Barriers in Canada: Options for Moving Forward
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Barriers to interprovincial trade impose significant costs upon the Canadian economy, with Alvarez et al (2019) estimating losses of between one and four percent of GDP (approximately $92 billion) on an annual basis. These barriers can take the form of natural barriers, prohibitive barriers that restrict or prohibit the movement of specific items, technical barriers, or regulator/administrative barriers. Regardless of the specific form of barrier, they all have the same effects: reductions in growth, output, efficiency and productivity. A number of drivers have given rise to these barriers over a long period of time. In some cases, shared jurisdiction between the federal and provincial governments within the Canadian federation has led to a lack of certainty over which senior level of government has final authority. Some courts have interpreted relevant sections of the Canadian constitution literally, while our Supreme Court has not, allowing barriers to remain despite seemingly clear phrasing within the constitution that prohibits restrictions on the movement of goods. Rent-seeking, protectionism and self-interest by industry stakeholders also may be playing a role in the maintenance of barriers. At least three options exist to begin to dismantle these barriers in order to realize the economic benefits associated with the freer flow of goods and services. First, a more constructionist interpretation of the relevant sections of the Constitution Act could help remove restrictions on interprovincial trade. Second, additional new partnerships similar to the New West Partnership Trade Agreement (NWPTA) between the four Western provinces could be negotiated. Lastly, efforts to remove barriers within specific industries could be increased, both within and outside of the Canadian Free Trade Agreement (CFTA). Each of these three potential strategies has benefits and costs, but it is certain that overall economic output, growth and equity would be increased as a result of increased liberalization of internal Canadian trade.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.007 | 0.014 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.019 | 0.008 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.013 | 0.007 |
| Open science | 0.005 | 0.008 |
| Research integrity | 0.009 | 0.010 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.021 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".