With any luck, we will learn that it should not take a crisis to get good work done
Reducing interprovincial trade barriers seems to be a hot topic these days, as I write this article during the first days of spring. If politicians’ recent public pronouncements are to be believed, you may already be living in a world in which decades’ worth of talk on the matter finally turned into real action within a matter of weeks.
First reaction: Hooray! Making it easier and less costly for goods, services, and workers to flow across provincial borders will improve the competitiveness of markets, enhance consumer well-being, expand opportunities for Nova Scotia firms, and boost productivity.
With the provincial government’s new legislation that offers other provinces and territories reciprocal removal of barriers to trade and investment, Nova Scotia has staked out a leading position on the matter.
Second reaction: It’s about time. While the slow pace of policy changes can be generally vexing, the circumstances underlying the current shift are especially frustrating.
Going back many, many years we have an accumulation of reports, analyses, and expert opinions laying out the gains available to us all by reducing trade frictions within Canada, yet it took the threat of American tariffs to finally spur us to action. We appear to now have broad agreement on the wisdom of reducing barriers, but the benefits to be enjoyed from this move were equally available to us last month, last year, and, well, last century.
With any luck we will learn from this experience that it should not take a crisis to do something that was a good idea anyway and that thirty or forty years is too long to actually get it done.
With the recent launch of our new Productivity Puzzle initiative, Halifax Partnership is diving into opportunities to boost productivity, competitiveness, and profitability, and to grow incomes and enhance prosperity. In addition to trade, we look forward to facilitating discussions on taxation, regulation, infrastructure, investment, and labour with the goal of improving understanding, expanding dialogue, and working towards solutions—including ones that perhaps have been ripe for the picking for some time.
If on the late spring day when you are reading this article we have indeed finally made real progress on the interprovincial trade front, let’s celebrate the fact that, for example, our Nova Scotia producers of wine, beer, and spirits are now sending their excellent products to be enjoyed by discerning consumers all across the country. However, if we are still just talking rather than acting, we’d better keep it all here—we may all need a stiff drink.
Learn more about the Halifax Partnership’s Productivity Puzzle
initiative at:
halifaxpartnership.com/research-strategy/the-productivity-puzzle
