Montreal City Weblog

Kate 10:02 on 2026-05-26 Permalink Reply  

• Taylor C. Noakes 12:10 on 2026-05-26 Permalink

  Charles Milliard: how else can I prove to you I have no idea what I’m doing right now?

• Joey 12:43 on 2026-05-26 Permalink

  Politics must be a lot harder than it looks given how often seemingly intelligent people wind up saying stuff like this…

• Blork 16:06 on 2026-05-26 Permalink

  Well, I only scanned the article but it seems like he’s mostly referring to things like making inter-provincial trade easier, standing up to Trump, and saying yes to Federal assistance in industry development. I’m not going to complain about those things.

• Joey 17:14 on 2026-05-26 Permalink

  Isn’t that the point? The hard part of doing politics is being able to say “we should borrow ideas and approaches from Doug Ford’s government” without everyone hearing “I want Quebec to emulate Doug Ford’s Ontario”… easier said than done…

• Kate 19:53 on 2026-05-26 Permalink

  Writing headlines – like writing brief blog summaries – lends itself to oversimplification.

• Taylor C. Noakes 20:22 on 2026-05-26 Permalink

  I dunno… ‘breaking down interprovincial trade barriers’ is a fancy way of saying ‘restricting workers’ rights’, and workers’ don’t have many rights to begin with, even here. It’s a euphemism for ‘get rid of anything standing in the way of the corporate steamroller.’

  Ford has taken a hatchet to Ontario’s environmental regulations, is a big fossil fuel booster, rejects EVs for purely ideological reasons, has zero respect for the press or for the rights of cities, and is pushing for nuclear power, despite far cheaper and more effective alternatives.

  He’s a rightwing populist, fundamentally no different than Danielle Smith, Scott Moe, or Pierre Poilievre. They are all cut from the same cloth, and they all will say and do whatever a small minority of elites tell them to, using language designed to appeal to everyone’s basest instincts.

  Do we need more of that in Quebec?

• Blork 21:29 on 2026-05-26 Permalink

  “‘breaking down interprovincial trade barriers’ is a fancy way of saying ‘restricting workers’ rights’, and workers’ don’t have many rights to begin with, even here. It’s a euphemism for ‘get rid of anything standing in the way of the corporate steamroller.’”

  Well, no, it’s more like “why was it so easy to sell goods to the U.S. but not right across the provincial border? Now that the U.S. is being the way they are it makes sense to do more trade horizontally.

  Most of those interprovincial trade barriers are based on things like the big domestic breweries needing to have a footprint in each province for union reasons, or to protect some agricultural producers, but that’s very 1950s thinking. It makes it difficult (for example) for a small independent brewery in Quebec to sell into Ontario or other provinces, or for Quebec cheese makers to sell to other provinces.

• Blork 21:30 on 2026-05-26 Permalink

  …it makes no sense that in Ontario you can find tons and tons of U.S. products, but so much stuff trying to come in from Quebec or BC has barriers on it.

• Nicholas 23:50 on 2026-05-26 Permalink

  I agree with Blork, including about how the headline is about emulating Ford but the article is about a speech to Toronto business people talking about how much he likes Ontario business. And while he could go into Ontario and say “I think the person I hope to be working with for 3 years sucks,” you can see why he might not do that.

• Tim S. 08:00 on 2026-05-27 Permalink

  Every story about inter-provincial trade I’ve ever read features some craft brewer going on about how they can’t sell their beer in Alberta or whatever. If only we got rid of these silly laws, the economy could benefit by (X) billions of dollars.

  Now, I’m no economist, but I do enjoy the occasional micro-brew. There’s some from my last trip to Ontario in my fridge even now. Thing is, if it becomes legal to sell BC beer here or whatever, that’s nice, but not I’m going to drink much more of it. Whatever I buy from BC will replace what I now buy from Quebec. So, unless I and many others turn into a raging alcoholic (consuming only expensive niche products, mind you), I don’t see where these billions of dollars will come from.

  All of which is to say that, yeah, I agree with Taylor that I suspect inter-provincial trade barriers is code for “race to the bottom of worker, consumer and environmental protections.”

• Blork 09:08 on 2026-05-27 Permalink

  The microbrewery example is always brought up because it’s easy to remember. It’s actually more about aligning various regulations and standards, etc. A bad (and fictional) example is something like this: Ontario insists that eggs be packaged by the tens while Quebec insists that eggs be packaged by the dozen. So Quebec farmers can’t sell eggs into Ontario unless they go through the expensive process of adding a “by the tens” packaging line. Obviously that’s made up, but my understanding is there are many real-life examples like that.

• SMD 09:52 on 2026-05-27 Permalink

  From a report last year by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives:

  “The idea that there are vast, hidden interprovincial trade barriers holding back the Canadian economy has seized the political, media and public imagination. In reality, the alleged costs of interprovincial trade irritants have been vastly overstated, as virtually all goods, services and investment flows freely across provincial borders. In that sense, recent laws and executive decisions aimed at increasing internal trade should be seen as the “premiers’ new clothes.” […] While these efforts will have little effect on Canada’s internal economy, there are downsides to the public interest [as they] will further reduce governments’ capacity to protect the environment, spur domestic economies, promote workplace health and safety, and stop predatory behaviours against consumers.”

  Lots of good examples and analysis in the report.