DOING business across Canada is not for the impatient. Its ten provinces and three territories see themselves as quasi-countries. They set standards and write laws with little regard for what their neighbours are doing. In Ontario petrol must be at least 5% ethanol; Manitoba insists on an 8.5% blend. Each province has its own ideas of how much grain dust people can be exposed to, and what sort of packages coffee creamer should come in. Ontario requires that toilets at construction sites be equipped with “open-front” seats; Alberta is toilet-seat neutral. If you buy booze in one province you had better drink it there. New Brunswick is pursuing a resident all the way to the Supreme Court for refusing to pay a fine of C$292.50 ($220) when he was caught bringing in beer and wine he had purchased in Quebec. Trade among provinces is less free than it is among the 28 members of the European Union.

So politicians from the regions and federal government were in a self-congratulatory mood after they signed a “Canadian Free-Trade Agreement” on April 7th. Brad Duguid, Ontario’s economy minister, who hosted the gathering, pronounced the deal “a major leap forward”. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business presented each of the ministers with its Golden Scissors Award for cutting red tape.

The main change on July 1st, when the accord takes effect, will be that firms can bid more easily for contracts with governments outside their home provinces. The provinces had little choice. A free-trade pact between Canada and the European Union is to take effect by mid-year. Without a change, European firms would have had more freedom to compete for provincial contracts than Canadian ones. The last big agreement to liberalise internal trade came in 1994, when the North American Free-Trade Agreement took effect. “We don’t do anything unless we’re forced to,” sighs a former federal trade minister.

Other barriers will fall more slowly, if at all. The agreement includes a “negative list”, meaning that only sectors explicitly mentioned can be protected from inter-provincial competition. (Before, provinces did not have to say which sectors they were shielding.) But the negative list is long, filling 136 of the deal’s 329 pages. It includes the provincial liquor monopolies, the production of dairy, poultry and eggs and the processing of timber. It does not bring uniformity to the provinces’ proliferation of rules, either.

The politicians promised to set up working groups to trim the list and reconcile regulations. There are plans to harmonise rules on selling recreational cannabis, which the federal government intends to legalise. Weed may thus cross boundaries more freely than booze, at least for a while. Some oddities may never go away. To register a standardbred horse in Quebec you must live in the province for 183 days. Ontario will still restrict licences to sell bullfrogs; Manitoban bullfrog-breeders are out of luck.