Canada has logged a boost in internal trade barrier elimination over the past six months, according to the "State of Internal Trade report: Interprovincial Cooperation Report Card" report released by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.
The progress in this period has been better than in the eight years since the signing of the Canadian Free Trade Agreement.
"The premiers and the prime minister have instructed the Committee on Internal Trade to reach a pan-Canadian mutual recognition agreement for December. We’ll be watching those conversations closely to ensure we cross the goal line and finally eliminate Canada’s internal trade barriers once and for all," said Ryan Mallough, CFIB’s vice-president of legislative affairs, in a statement.
Nova Scotia logged a grade of 9.4 - the highest in the CFIB's 2025 Internal trade report card (A grade). It was the first province to pass mutual recognition legislation. Ontario followed with a score of 9.2 after removing all CFTA exceptions.
The report card ranks Canadian provinces based on three major areas of interprovincial/territorial cooperation: CFTA exceptions, select barriers to trade, and the status of items from reconciliation agreements. Jurisdictions that accept other regions' regulations as adequate receive bonus points.
Mallough noted that seven jurisdictions in the country are taking varied approaches to mutual recognition.
"Three years ago, we challenged governments to blow a hole through Canada’s internal trade barriers by adopting mutual recognition policies to get the flow of goods, services and people moving across the country. At the time, we heard all the reasons why it couldn’t be done. But just in the past six months we’ve seen seven jurisdictions with mutual recognition legislation on the books,” said SeoRhin Yoo, CFIB’s senior policy analyst for interprovincial affairs. "The internal trade file is finally getting the attention is has desperately needed since the CFTA was signed in 2017."
However, Mallough warned against the implementation of these disparate approaches.
"That kind of patchwork can wind up recreating the barriers it was meant to knock down," he said.
Yoo said that the CFIB would be monitoring governments' next moves, such as critical regulations following legislation, "to ensure the rules match the rhetoric and small businesses feel actual progress on the ground."