Quote:
Originally Posted by Azure
Oh, so you're saying that the only reason Canada doesn't trade more with itself is because of geographical reasons?
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Primarily, yes. Why would you pay to transport something 5,000km across Canada when you have a willing customer 500km away?
Yes, there are regulations that create barriers for domestic trade, but the same things exist to an even greater degree when it comes to international trade. Do think foreign producers having to produce packaging materials with two languages just for Canada doesn't represent a barrier? Or having to do different production runs to meet Canadian regulations vs. the US's. Or do you think different transportation regulations between Canada and the US don't create a non-tariff barrier to the movement of goods? Sure they do. But despite that, it's still more viable to ship many goods shorter distances across the border than it is to ship them across a giant country.
And that doesn't even get into the fact that as a resource producing country, we produce many things that our domestic market cannot possibly satisfy, which means inter-provincial trade making up a significant portion of goods movement for those things is impossible.