Overall, B.C. was given a “B” grade by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business in its annual report, released in July, on the status of interprovincial trade, but a dispute with Alberta over direct-to-consumer wine sales earlier this year indicates there is still room for improvement.
Jairo Yunis, a B.C. Business Council policy director and former director of B.C. and western economic policy at CFIB, said one example is that trucking in the province is essentially facing a five-per-cent tariff to bring goods into Alberta or other jurisdictions in Canada.
“There was an analysis done by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, months ago, that calculated the average internal trade cost for the trucking industry in B.C. was around five per cent,” said Yunis.
“I know that there is a working group looking at a pilot project to mutually recognize all these standards and regulations across all provinces. So that’s definitely something that would remove some of these internal trade barriers in some of those sectors, specifically trucking.”