CTA News Release – CTA Hopeful One Canadian Economy Bill Will Help Rebuild, Boost Supply Chain

(TORONTO, June 9, 2024) — The Canadian Trucking Alliance is encouraged that Prime Minister Carney appears to be acting on promises to immediately tackle the economic challenges facing Canada.

Last week, Dominic LeBlanc – president of the King’s Privy Council for Canada and Minister responsible for Canada-U.S. Trade, Intergovernmental Affairs and One Canadian Economy – introduced new legislation designed to remove federal barriers to internal trade and labour mobility, and advance nation-building projects crucial for driving Canadian productivity growth, energy security, and economic competitiveness.

The Bill – titled the One Canadian Economy: An Act to enact the Free Trade and Labour Mobility in Canada Act and the Building Canada Act –seeks to build projects in the national interest by focusing and kickstarting on more executable initiatives and speeding up the approval process of major infrastructure projects. Under the new legislation, in cases where there is a federal barrier, a good or service that meets comparable provincial or territorial rules will be considered to have met federal requirements for internal trade.

The new legislation streamlines multiple decision points for federal approval and aims to minimize uncertainty and build confidence for builders and investors.

This bill builds upon the mutual recognition trucking sector project, championed by CTA and launched at the Committee on Internal Trade in 2024. At the recent First Ministers’ Meeting, the Premiers and Prime Minister agreed that federal-provincial-territorial officials will work together to rapidly expand this work across the trucking sector: 

“Increasing the efficiency of trucking across Canada complements the removal of federal barriers on goods and services across the economy and in key sectors like home building.”

The CTA has issued two documents – on interprovincial trade barriers and restoring productivity – that highlight the domestic areas and projects where removal of interprovincial trade barriers is critical to unlock productivity and growth for the trucking supply chain.

“CTA has worked diligently over several years to position our industry as the backbone of the supply chain. Our sector needs regulatory attention to operate effectively and productively,” said CTA President Stephen Laskowski. “We now have a wonderful opportunity to address the issues that hindered our sector, our customers and partners within supply chain, and economy as well.”

“Led by Ottawa, now is the time all levels of government need to cooperate in earnest and in good faith, with our industry and concertedly fix these issues.”