The Atlantic Chamber of Commerce (ACC) says now is the time to remove trade barriers across the Atlantic provinces as the country continues to navigate tariff threats from the United States.
CEO Rhonda Tulk-Lane tells our newsroom it may be a little harder to establish free trade across the whole country, so the ACC would like to start off smaller.
“If it’s getting a little more tricky right across Canada, what about the four of us? What about the Atlantic trade zone? What does that look like? Maybe biting off a smaller piece,” says Tulk-Lane.
The idea of free trade in our country has been floating for weeks with Nova Scotia’s Premier Tim Houston, New Brunswick’s Premier Susan Holt and most recently Prince Edward Island’s Premier, Rob Lantz putting their support behind it.
However, Tulk-Lane says the opportunity is limited.
“I think the ‘right now’ window is open because what we’ve been seeing with our neighbours to the south, they really caused us to look at what’s in our control,” says Tulk-Lane.
“I’ve never in my 30, going on 40 years of talking economic development …free trade…I’ve never seen everyone more aligned.”
Despite this, she says, considering what is happening globally with the on-again, off-again tariffs, there is the threat of the ‘window’ closing again, so we need to move quickly.
Going to take courage
Removing trade barriers is easier said than done.
Tulk-Lane says the two sectors that have been ‘bubbling to the top’ are labour and trucking.
The reason for this, she says, is that each province has things they may or may not want to protect and trucking is one that may not cause a lot of job loss.
“We need to look at government creating the regulation and legislation. We need to look at the unions and their collective agreements and what they have in place. Then we need to look at business and what business wants to do and how will it help or hinder,” says Tulk-Lane.
What happens if we don’t break the barriers down…
Tulk-Lane says if we don’t take advantage of the opportunity of free trade now, it would be very unfortunate.
“I think we’re going to lose growth and revenue if we don’t do this and figure this out,” says Tulk-Lane.
She notes that we can diversify our markets and show the rest of the world we are ready to do business.
“Let’s get rid of these internal trade barriers now within Canada and create our own destiny.”
