Road conditions, tolls, regulations part of conversation on internal trade barriers

The trucking industry says interprovincial trade barriers have long been an everyday hassle.

Some truckers want a renewed conversation about removing interprovincial trade barriers to include transportation infrastructure and regulations, just as much as any restrictive economic policies.

“There’s certainly a number of internal trade barriers that affect the trucking industry,” said Chris McKee, executive director of the Atlantic Provinces Trucking Association.

McKee pointed to one example: the untwined section of Quebec’s Route 185 near the New Brunswick border. Long combination vehicles (tractors hauling more than one trailer) aren’t permitted to travel through the untwined section. Instead, truckers are required to drive each trailer individually through the section. McKee said it’s a process that can add up to two hours to a driver’s time.

“Not to mention the increased fuel costs and operation costs,” said McKee, adding the timeline for completing the section’s twinning wasn’t expected until December 2026 at the earliest.

McKee said another internal trade barrier was last year’s interruption of ferry service between Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia.

“That was a real issue for people and farmers and folks trying to get their products off western Prince Edward Island to the Port of Halifax, or Newfoundland, or what have you,” said McKee.

Prince Edward Island Premier Dennis King has repeatedly mentioned tolls on the Confederation Bridge and Island ferries as a regional trade barrier, recently calling for them to be eliminated altogether.

When asked on Tuesday about the removal of P.E.I. tolls, Transport Minister Anita Anand said, “We definitely want to make sure that every jurisdiction has the ability to interact and participate in the Canadian economy.”

Anand didn’t directly address the question of removing P.E.I. tolls, saying “we’re definitely looking at all options,” in an interview with CTV’s Todd Battis.

Anand said there’s also been agreement on the “mutual recognition” of trucking policies across the country, which would be implemented immediately.

“If one jurisdiction has rules that are slightly different from another jurisdiction, each province and territory is going to recognize the rules of the other so trucks don’t have to stop and rearrange their lights, or lighten their load,” said Anand. “That mutual recognition system is one that all provinces and territories agreed to adopt for all sectors on Friday afternoon when we met in an urgent meeting in Toronto.”