Trade policy people spend most of their time talking about free trade between countries. But there is still some work to do on free trade within countries. Some Canadians are making a push right now, as Canadian business groups are calling for Canada’s leaders “to dismantle internal trade barriers and ensure the free movement of goods, services, capital and labour between all parts of the country.”

If that sounds odd, don’t get the wrong idea. It’s not as though Canadian provinces are imposing tariffs on each other. Rather, this is part of a more advanced notion of free trade, where you have a “single market” for goods and services. So for example, these groups complain that:

Different regulations and standards means that manufacturers may need to adapt their machinery in order to produce containers such as dairy creamers, butter and drinkable yogurts for sale nationally across all provincial jurisdictions.

Or:

massage therapy is regulated in some provinces but not all, meaning that a professional would have to become certified in order to be allowed to practice.

These issues are difficult to address between sovereign nations, although people are trying, most notably in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership negotiations. But within countries, it seems like this is something that could and should be dealt with. Here in the U.S., we have the famous problem of not being able to buy health insurance across state lines. The current effort in Canada seems like a valuable one; it might be useful to have a similar review of internal trade barriers here in the U.S.