REGINA - This past week has seen a flurry of news involving Saskatchewan when it comes to interprovincial trade.
The news transpired from Premier Scott Moe’s trip to the Council of the Federation meetings in Muskoka, in which a number of memorandums of understanding were signed to boost interprovincial trade efforts between the provinces. Saskatchewan was a signatory to several of those.
On Monday, Moe signed MOUs with Prince Edward Island Premier Rob Lantz and Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew on enhancing trade between the provinces, with commitments for frameworks for direct to consumer alcohol sales, and to facilitate mutual recognition of credentials for labour mobility. Those follow on the heels of a similar deal signed with Ontario in June.
On Tuesday, Moe and Kinew as well as the Arctic Gateway Group announced an MOU to strengthen trade through access to the Port of Churchill.
Premier Scott Moe also signed a MOU with Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith establishing a collaborative framework to explore multiple pipeline and rail corridors, and expand processing hubs for critical minerals.
There has been talk for years about addressing interprovincial trade barriers, and there has been some movement with the New West Partnership signed among the four Western provinces to remove trade barriers. But now it has become a national conversation and a key point of discussion at the Council of the Federation meetings last week. Moe had gone into the conference inviting other Premiers to join in the New West Partnership. Instead, the Premiers opted to strengthen provisions in the existing Canadian Free Trade Agreement, using the New West deal as an example.
When asked Wednesday why there has been such a focus on removing interprovincial trade barriers compared to previous years, Moe responded that the “tariff disputes that we're having right now have the potential to be unlike anything that we've experienced before.
“Tariff disputes are not new for our countries. We're very globally connected as you know, we're shipping products to over 160 countries throughout the world. We have had in my time two, maybe three tariff disputes with China; one, maybe two with India; as well as the previous tariff dispute we had with the Trump administration….
“What we're facing today not only with the President of the United States making an effort to reset the trade relationship with Canada but at the same time resetting the trade relationship with the world…. very much a time of uncertainty when it comes to trade.
"... I credit my provincial colleagues for years from across the nation for rather than talking about any interprovincial irregularities or trade issues that we might have, we're actually acting on it — removing exemptions in our our national free trade deal that we have, doing our level best to look at reciprocal labour mobility so people can move around the provinces to find work for or to be certified at least in whatever their area of expertise is.
"But I think that is what we're seeing and I mentioned it in the press conference today -- if there's any good to come out of the the urgency that's created or the uncertainty that's created by President Trump and some other global relations right now, it's this: for years we've been talking about doing better at interprovincial trade. I think what you're seeing now is actual action in this space, and that I'd say it's high time and and we should have been doing it years ago.”
But while Moe welcomed the moves to open trade between provinces, Moe also said that moving away from trade with the USA is “an unreasonable dream. If we think we aren't going to export or import product to the United States, I can't think of any environment where that would actually be the true outcome.”
“And so, you know, when someone says we need to move away from dealing with the United States, that can be true in part, but it certainly can't be true in whole. They are our largest trading partner -- our largest ally have been up until recently as well. But I would say that as we find our way through this conversation, both will clearly remain true to some degree, however, I think our relationship with the United States will be, if not forever changed, changed for a long period of time due to… the rhetoric that's come out of the White House this last short period.”
He also spoke on the question how to deal with a "pretty challenging trade discussion with the President of the United States. Should you put your elbows up or should you engage face-to-face with that administration?”
Moe contends the proper approach is the latter.
“We very quickly, in the early days of this trade negotiation or public conversation, you might call it in the early days, were able to have oil reduced from a 25 per cent tariff to a 10 per cent tariff. Our largest export in Saskatchewan to the United States is oil. It also accounts for about 95 per cent, if not higher, of our oil sales each and every year. To have that reduced from 25 per cent to 10 per cent was a tremendous success for the interim. We then, not too long after that, through engagement with (Iowa Senator) Chuck Grassley and others, were able to have oil actually reduced by the same amount.
“Currently, both of those are USMCA compliant and aren't subject to the tariff setting anyway, but it's an example of using all of the the Canadian connections that we have, whether they be at the subnational level or the national level, to find our way to a better trade relationship, at least in the short term, with the United States of America."
NDP's Young less than impressed
Back in Saskatchewan, opposition New Democrats skewered the Moe government for failing to return home with progress on China’s tariffs on canola, and for claiming Saskatchewan was not being affected as much by the tariffs.
“Today, Premier Scott Moe continues to mislead the people of Saskatchewan about the state of our economy,” said NDP Economy and Jobs critic Aleana Young on Thursday.
“Now, we've heard the Premier claim that Saskatchewan has essentially been unscathed in the trade war, but unlike this tired and out-of-touch government, the facts from Statistics Canada don't lie.“
Young pointed to numbers that Saskatchewan experienced a 26.5 per cent year-over-year drop in merchandise exports to the United States in May, a 9.4 per cent reduction so far this year. She also blasted Moe for comments during a media interview in which he had said the “elbows up” approach was the wrong approach to trade negotiations.
“It's clear that this Premier has no plan. He'd prefer to pander to Donald Trump because he needs to keep his caucus together, and frankly, he's not all that outraged. It took weeks for him to denounce the 51st state nonsense, and he took every opportunity he could to avoid calling it out. He wants us to drop our elbows. He said so last week, despite clear evidence that his MAGA buddies are hurting the Saskatchewan economy and making life harder for working people and for businesses in the province, because right now we have tariffs on Saskatchewan steel and further tariffs threatened for August 1st. Workers and businesses in agriculture, in mining, in transportation, small businesses, they're all dealing with the impacts of this reality.”
As for Young’s reaction to the MOU Saskatchewan signed with Manitoba for the Port of Churchill, she said “everything we can do to get greater access for Canadian goods to market is incredibly beneficial to our economy.
“But this is a Premier who set the bar for the Council of Federation at having every other province sign on to the New West trade partnership agreement and came back empty handed. He came back with no action on canola tariffs, despite having known that these were coming for going on a year. The Port of Churchill is great. The more that we can do to get our products to market, the better, but we need to see action and we need to see action in Saskatchewan.”
Young also had her own comments about the sudden interest in interprovincial trade and breaking down the internal trade barriers in Canada.
“So my understanding is a look at history suggests that it does kind of wax and wane the interest in interprovincial trade and governments from time to time have focused on this,” said Young.
“But right now we have a generational opportunity with our closest ally traditionally, the United States, with our largest trading partner, suddenly acting in not so friendly a way over the past year. I think it's caused Canadians, regardless of where they live, regardless of political stripe, to look at what we can do to be working with other Canadians. It's part of why we're talking about that need to focus on rail lines, pipelines, power lines, everything we can do to build economic security in Canada and take advantage of the existing assets that we have, whether it's things like rail lines or whether it is things like EVRAZ here in Saskatchewan.
“These are critical pieces of economic infrastructure that we should be focused on. Of course, like with interprovincial trade, it can't be a race to the bottom for occupational health and safety standards. This isn't about lowering the bar across Canada. This is about making sure that we can get it right. And if we can't find ways to make sure that we can sell steaks and beer across Canada, we've probably got some bigger challenges as a country.”
