Thank you to the students and staff at the Clayton H. Riddell Graduate Program in Political Management at @Carleton_U for hosting yesterday's Coalition for a Better Future Campus Tour event. Program Director André Turcotte led a meaningful conversation with our co-chairs, Hon. Anne McLellan and @lraitt, about Canada’s economic landscape and the role of decision-makers in developing public policy. The co-chairs emphasized the importance of #inclusive and #sustainable #EconomicGrowth and the value of grassroots support and stakeholder engagement in shaping effective public policies. The co-chairs shared insights from their political journeys, underscoring how cross-partisan #Collaboration among elected officials and their staff can lead to developing and implementing long-lasting policies that will benefit Canadians. 🤝 By working together, we can build a more #prosperous country for everyone. The Coalition is grateful for @Shell_Canada support in making our Campus Tour series possible.

Marathon Petroleum, the largest US refiner and a major buyer of Canadian crude, sees ample opportunity to switch to domestic oil at its Midwest plants

We must put CANADA FIRST.   That is why Common Sense Conservatives condemn President Trump’s massive, unjust and unjustified tariffs on Canada’s already weak economy. Canada is the United States’ closest neighbour, greatest ally and best friend. We share the longest undefended border and fought alongside Americans in two world wars, Korea and Afghanistan, where 158 of our brave men and women died helping the U.S. avenge the 9/11 attacks. There is no justification whatsoever for this treatment.       The Liberals must put aside their partisan interests and recall Parliament now to pass a Canada First Plan that will:    1. Retaliate with dollar-for-dollar tariffs carefully aimed at maximizing impact on American companies while minimizing impact on Canadian consumers. That means targeting U.S. products that we can make ourselves, buy elsewhere or do without. For example, we must retaliate against American steel and aluminium, as Canadians can make those vital products at home.    2. Put all the tariff revenues into help for affected workers and businesses; Government should not keep a dime of the new revenue.    3. Pass a massive emergency Bring It Home Tax Cut to bolster the economy, stop inflation and save and create jobs. Canada needs a massive tax cut on work, investment, energy, homebuilding and making stuff at home. The Liberal carbon tax and capital gains tax hikes must be the first on the chopping block.     4. Immediately scrap the Liberal anti-resource law C-69 and greenlight LNG plans, pipelines, mines, factories, and port expansions to overseas markets.     5. Bring in truly free trade within Canada by knocking down interprovincial barriers to help replace lost north-south trade with east-west trade and to make us self-reliant.   6. Rebuild our military and take back control of our borders to regain the confidence of our partners, assert our sovereignty, protect our people and put Canada First.      We will protect our economy, defend our sovereignty, bring home production and paycheques and never back down. We will put Canada First—now and always.

There has been a lot of commentary in recent days about interprovincial trade barriers but one gets the sense that most of those commenting couldn't cite specific barriers if forced—with the exception of vague references to alcohol or transportation. One of the principal challenges with addressing interprovincial trade barriers is that no province has a policy called "interprovincial trade barrier." In fact, there aren't even many instances where provincial policy is explicitly and intentionally protectionist. Most interprovincial trade barriers are in fact legal and provincial divergences that have grown up over time with no real rhyme or reason. Most of them aren't matters of significant political principle or import. For instance: A restaurant license in Lloydminster, SK, needs to be renewed every 2 years. The same license in Lloydminster, AB, must be renewed every 5 years. It's hard to imagine that either Premiers Moe or Smith are personally committed to these different policies. So if it's not politics, what's the impediment to progress? A major obstacle to eliminating interprovincial trade barriers is actually identifying them. They're set out under different regulations and statues and often written in different language. I have a hypothesis that we could enable the elimination of a significant share of interprovincial trade barriers by using AI technology to go systematically through provincial regulations and policies and create an apples-to-apples comparison across the provinces. Provincial governments could then clearly see where these policy divergences exist, determine which ones are matters of principles and which aren't, and then settle on how best to converge them. To use the example above, maybe they move to 5-year licenses or maybe they pick a number in between. This of course wouldn't fully eliminate interprovincial trade barriers. But it would enable us to address technocratic differences across the provinces and then focus our attention on ones that are an outgrowth of politics.