After the U.S. tariff shock, the Prime Minister discovered internal trade: one Canadian economy, he declared, was the answer to a hostile border. The rhetoric was expansive. The record is not. Supply management remains “not on the table,” provincial carve-outs multiply with federal blessing, and the federal government’s own procurement and regulatory barriers persist untouched.
The contradiction is structural. A government that preaches free movement of goods between provinces while protecting the very walls that make groceries expensive is not building one economy; it is auctioning exemptions to it. Every exception granted to a protected interest is a tariff collected from a family at the checkout.
The cost is not abstract. Interprovincial trade barriers are a self-imposed tariff in a country already absorbing an estimated $120 billion in external trade costs. When the crisis demanded courage, the government offered a speech; when the speech ended, the walls stayed.
The Point: A country that cannot trade with itself does not get to claim it is fighting for trade with the world. The internal wall is the government’s own, and it has chosen to keep it.