Trade

The high costs of internal trade barriers in Atlantic Canada and the outsized benefits of removing them

How breaking down trade barriers could supercharge Atlantic Canada’s economy

Past Event

For the first time ever, PPF’s premier growth conversation will be a truly pan-Canadian event, spanning coast to coast. The Growth Summit Roundtables will comprise a series of closed-door roundtable discussions across the country followed by a public webinar. The roundtables will build momentum to PPF's 6th annual Growth Summit scheduled for April 28, 2022 at the MTCC in Toronto.

Canadian Economic Competitiveness

COVID-19 has made it clear that Canada needs a strong domestic manufacturing sector to produce what it needs. Industrial production has been stagnant in the country for two decades and it’s a must for Canada to create and sustain a resilient manufacturing economy that will also be more competitive in a globalized economy and that will create good jobs while minimizing environmental impacts.

Relations with the United States have been challenging for Canada in recent years. It’s become clear that Canada needs to move beyond its traditional trade-of-goods narrative with the U.S. and focus on factors that will be most important for its diplomatic assets in the coming years, namely culture and technology.

Canada’s relationship has deteriorated since Canada arrested Huawei’s Meng Wanzhou and China retaliated by arresting Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor. The Trudeau government has weighed the costs of human rights advocacy from an increasingly repressive China against commercial interest with the world’s second-biggest economy. It’s led to a stalemate of sorts, but there are some actions Canada could take.

Canada must come to grips not just with a massive fiscal shortfall but also consecutive deficits in our current account, a broad measure of our trading and investment relationship with the rest of the world. A government plan must be growth oriented if we are to get the twin deficits under control without resorting to the drastic measures of 25 years ago.

As the future of work continues to evolve, so too do the skills that Canadians will need to succeed. Over the summer, the Public Policy Forum, the Diversity Institute at Ryerson University and the Future Skills Centre will release six new reports to identify the most important issues currently impacting skills policymaking. Read key takeaways in each report that will strengthen policymaking and build a strong foundation intended to help support further research.

Our Task Force conducted a preliminary study of the feasibility of an Arctic Food Innovation Cluster in Canada. The intent of such a cluster is to advance increased access to affordable, culturally informed, healthy food across northern regions. The cluster’s secondary objective is to foster further innovations within the North’s commercial food production industry via new food production methods (e.g., full utilization of harvested fish), value chains, and/or governance models. This would, in turn, boost local economic development opportunities within these northern communities.

"In signing on for NAFTA 2.0, Canada also joined the Trump administration's China agenda," writes CBC's Janyce McGregor in a CBC Analysis article. "When the Trudeau government agreed to a revised North American free trade deal, the Americans said Canada also agreed to something else: joining Donald Trump's trade war on China."

Past Event

Ambassador David MacNaughton, Brian Tobin, Washington journalists Luiza Savage of Politico and Ali Velshi of MSNBC, and Janice Gross Stein of the Munk School unpack the state of U.S. politics and its impacts on Canada.

In this opinion piece, Thomas Walkom tries to answer the question - How can Canada break its dependence on the United States? A question that has bedeviled both the left and the right since 1945. He writes that PPF's Report “Diversification not Dependence,” makes a compelling case for Canada to escape the “honey trap” of its reliance on the U.S. by moving quickly to boost both economic and political relations with China.

Business in Vancouver's Chuck Chiang writes about PPF latest report "Diversification Not Dependence: A Made-in-Canada China Strategy." The report says Canada should turn to sectoral agreements - that is, deals focusing on specific industries like agriculture and energy - in growing business links with China in light of the perceived “U.S. veto” clause in the new USMCA North American free-trade agreement.