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After recent announcements by Alberta to unilaterally abolish some trade barriers, that province has just six CFTA exceptions remaining. In comparison, Ontario has 24 exceptions, and Quebec 35, which explains why those provinces are ranked 10th and 13th respectively.

There are ways each province can lessen its internal trade barriers. For example, New Brunswick could, among other measures, open up to cross-border beer, wine and liquor. Quebec could reverse its opposition to the transportation of oil from Alberta. Even Alberta could improve by allowing direct-to-consumer wine shipments.

The best way for liberalization to happen is for a province or territory to act unilaterally to end its own barriers. The Alberta government has already moved ahead in just this fashion. In July, Premier Jason Kenney announced that all the exceptions to open public procurement that the province had listed in the 2017 CFTA were unilaterally withdrawn and abolished. In September, Alberta announced further eliminations of exceptions, and in October, the Manitoba government followed suit.

The Alberta and Manitoba examples of unilaterally abolishing barriers could be a model for the other provinces and territories. Many of the premiers have expressed their support for free internal trade and when they met this summer they each committed to reviewing their own CFTA exceptions by the end of the year.

Given the historical aims of Canada’s founders, the clear economic rationale for free interprovincial trade, the decisive support in public opinion, and the political desire, the time may finally have come to transform Canada into the free-trading dynamo envisioned in 1867.

Mark Milke is a senior fellow at the Montreal Economic Institute and author of the MEI’s Internal Trade Provincial Leadership Index. His latest book is The Victim Cult: How the culture of blame hurts everyone and wrecks civilizations. Peter St. Onge is a senior economist at the Montreal Economic Institute.