QUESTION PERIOD — Ministry of Internal Trade
Canadian Free Trade Agreement
February 24, 2026
Thank you for that response. I looked at the committee’s 2025 Year in Review highlights, and I noted that the parties have concluded financial services negotiations and will incorporate a new chapter into the Canadian Free Trade Agreement, or CFTA, in 2026. Can you expand on how these changes might facilitate the supply of financial services across Canada and make access to capital for SMEs — which is so important — more easily obtained and delivered?
Again, senator, thank you for the question. Financial services, in terms of having true free trade between the 13 provinces and territories in Canada, have always been a challenge. Different provincial regulators have different rules. They have been for a long time. The Government of Canada had some exemptions to the free trade agreement in financial services, which, of course, were eliminated in June by the adoption of the legislation that this house and the House of Commons adopted.
It is work that is being led largely by Ontario. We have an in‑person meeting co-chaired by Canada and Nunavut in March of the Committee on Internal Trade. The premiers agreed with the Prime Minister at our meeting in January that we would try to make very significant, quick progress on building codes and mutual recognition of labour and trades because of the importance, for example, of the construction of housing and other labour mobility issues.
I intend to push the provinces on the access to capital issues, as you said. In Atlantic Canada, the number of financial institutions 20 years ago that might have offered opportunities to those SMEs has significantly diminished, so they’re doing business with a company in another jurisdiction now, and they’re caught up in these interprovincial rules.
To wrap that up and continue on that thought, how is the communication process coming along to the SMEs? Have you talked to many of them? Are they positive, confident that they will be able to navigate across Canada, have access to capital like they should have and keep our economy going forward, progressing?
That’s a very good question, senator. In fact, one of the things that the Prime Minister and I committed to first ministers — and I said this when we met as the Committee on Internal Trade at that meeting in Yellowknife you referred to in November — is that we have a Trade Commissioner Service that helps small- and medium-sized businesses — to Senator Boehm’s question — access the Mexican market. I saw that last week myself.
We are in the process of standing up with provincial partners the equivalent of a domestic Trade Commissioner Service, precisely so we can take some of that energy and enthusiasm and use federal Regional Development Agencies and provincial partners to assist those small businesses in Canada as well.
