Canada is actively working to diversify trade, building relationships with countries across the globe to expand where our goods and services are shipped.
Much of Canada’s export basket is heavily weighted toward raw materials from natural gas to uranium and critical minerals, as well as agriculture commodities and forestry products.
A big but lesser-known export is Canadian services, making up more than 7% of Canada’s GDP. Healthcare, education and finance are just some of the professions that make up the service sector, says Mitch Villeneuve, Director of Economic Policy at Scotiabank.
“If we're looking at other G7 nations, [Canada is] quite diversified economically. We have a lot of big sectors,” he said.
Targeting external partners isn’t the only way to diversify the Canadian economy, said Villeneuve, as bolstering trade within the country helps as well.
A new report from the International Monetary Fund shows that Canada’s economy could gain $210 billion in real GDP by eliminating all interprovincial trade barriers.
In the past year, the federal government has removed legislation that inhibited trade between provinces while provinces are working to eliminate or limit their share of regulations that make the exchange of goods across the country difficult.
“Removing trade barriers between provinces would remove barriers to investment within Canada, which would get more projects going,” said Villeneuve.
Canada already has 15 free trade agreements in place with 49 different countries, these include agreements such as CUSMA (Canada U.S. Mexico Agreement) and CETA (Canada- European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement), and the federal government is actively reaching out to other nations to forge new or renew trade partnerships.
