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Canada’s provinces already impose thousands of protectionist measures. Now nothing can stop them. As the Supreme Court unanimously decided Thursday, existing constitutional references to free trade within Canada are meaningless words with narrow application, so narrow that they might as well not exist.

The case began when the RCMP arrested Gerard Comeau, now a 64-year-old New Brunswicker, for transporting beer illegally from Quebec into his home province. To fight the case, Comeau was joined by financial backers and a top Toronto lawyer, Ian Blue, who has long argued that Canadians have been living under a legal regime that ignores a constitutional guarantee of internal free trade.

The words in the Constitution may seem clear to mere mortals. The 1867 BNA Act, Section 121, says: “All articles of the growth, produce, or manufacture of any of the provinces shall, from and after the union, be admitted free into each of the other provinces.”

But the Supreme Court of Canada, observing through the prism of legal, political and judicial protectionist complexity rather than the eyes of mere mortals, says the words “admitted free” are “ambiguous” or “arguably ambiguous.” They do not mean, said the court, that Canadians can go to another province and buy beer under the assumption that the beer can be “admitted free” back to their home province.