Quote:
Originally Posted by opendoor
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.
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You are incredibly (to say the frickin' least) understating the market barriers in Canada that prohibit inter provincial trade.
There is a reason why economists are saying reducing these barriers could increase our GDP by up to 4%.
As someone who ships to the US on a daily basis, shipping the same goods in Canada is far more cost effective from every perspective possible.
Shipping the same pallet of goods from Winnipeg to Vancouver costs 40% less LTL, and 60% less inter modal than shipping from Winnipeg to any state that isn't North or South Dakota.
There are also less cross docking needs, no customs, export duties, other ridiculous Canada to US regulations, quicker transport, etc.
Growing interprovincial trade as much as possible in every sector in Canada would be a massive benefit for all Canadians. But yeah, there are obviously huge benefits to trading with the US. The exchange rate makes our products very appealing for starters.