Nearly nine months after provincial premiers announced they'd reached an agreement in principle on a new trade agreement with each other, details will finally be revealed in Toronto on Friday on what the pact covers and what it does not.
Ontario's Economic Development Minister Brad Duguid, who's been leading the talks, will be joined by his provincial counterparts as well as federal minister Navdeep Bains and representatives from groups pushing for such a pact.
While many long-standing inter-provincial trade irritants won't quite disappear it will turn the process of government regulation on its head: free trade is about to become the default position. From now on, it's adding new barriers that will require special negotiations, not lifting them.
Emerging industries, like the potential sale of marijuana products across Canada once the federal government finishes its legalization process, could be regulated under this deal. But future negotiations between provinces will have to figure out the smartest and most efficient way to do that.
The Canada Free Trade Agreement (CFTA) will replace the Agreement on Internal Trade (AIT), which has set rules for inter-provincial trade in Canada since 1995.
Previous attempts at inter-provincial trade deals had tried to make it easier to do business in specific ways.
By contrast, this deal is "all-in" and covers the entire economy. All trade barriers are meant to fall unless they're specifically excluded in "negative lists" in the deal's annex.
The premiers said last July this kind of detail would be more transparent on what governments regulate. But no list was made public, leaving open the question of how comprehensive it would really be.
Friday's release of the full 300-page text will lay out exactly what provinces and territories agreed to eliminate and protect.
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