The Progressive Conservative party released its platform on Monday, and it pledges to lower barriers that hinder the movement of people and goods across provincial borders. Some of these changes would be immediately visible to consumers, like allowing Ontarians to purchase alcohol directly from out-of-province producers (currently, all alcohol from out of province must be purchased through the LCBO). Others are more arcane, involving mutual recognition of regulations and making moves under the Canada Free Trade Agreement.
The move by PC Party leader Doug Ford was initially announced alongside Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston, who this week followed up by introducing legislation to treat any reciprocating province’s goods and regulated professional qualifications the same as any Nova Scotian’s. A big deal, and Ford for his part reacted Wednesday morning by posting to X “Count me in.”
It’s not just Tweets; the Tories have language in their platform backing Ford up. One of the party’s more consequential promises is streamlining the recognition of credentials across provincial boundaries — so provincially-regulated professions such as doctors, nurses, lawyers, architects, and so on would be able to freely move from other provinces into Ontario, and vice versa. On the merits it’s a fine idea: a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian, and I’m not convinced there’s a strong reason why Ontario should want to prevent professionals from other provinces to move here, which is the effect of onerous red tape.
My question is whether that’s actually the direction people would travel, if it suddenly became easier to move across different Canadian jurisdictions.
Some basic facts: while Vancouver and Toronto regularly compete for whose housing market is the most indefensibly expensive, this is a case where quantity has a quality all its own. The Greater Toronto Area alone has a population larger than the entire province of British Columbia, with somewhere between 6 and 7 million people depending on where you draw the lines — with another 9 or 10 million in the rest of the province. That’s relevant here because while the GTA is arguably worst affected, there’s no part of the province that’s untouched by the housing crisis.
When we’re talking about labour mobility in this context, we’re not talking about janitors and taxi drivers (no disrespect to either of those trades). We’re talking about, in many cases, high-income professions and people whose skills are in high demand more-or-less everywhere in this country. Is there a provincial government in Canada right now that would say no to more nurses in their hospitals?
The rest of the country, meanwhile, can offer something that Ontario can’t: substantially lower housing costs. A quick perusal of data from the Canadian Real Estate Association is enough to remind even seasoned observers just how bad the situation is in Ontario. Despite a recent run-up in prices out east a house in Halifax costs about half as much as one in Toronto. A home in Winnipeg costs half of one in Hamilton. Calgary is cheaper than any of the largest Ontario metros, and Edmonton is cheaper still.
So if the PC Party remains in government after Thursday and follows through on its promise to liberate high-income, high-demand workers, does anyone think that the result will be that Ontario sees a net gain of people from across Canada? Or will we simply export our housing crisis to other provinces, as those people take their high incomes and bid up housing stocks elsewhere?
No need to think very hard about the answer: Ontario is already a net exporter of people to other provinces — strikingly, every single Ontario census metropolitan area lost more people to other provinces than it gained between July 1 2022 and June 30 2023. Increasing interprovincial mobility must almost by definition increase those flows, if it accomplishes anything.
Ontario’s export of housing customers has already been incredibly disruptive in markets all over the country, and it’s tempting to argue the nine other premiers should actually refuse to recognize Ontario’s professional qualifications until we literally get our houses in order. Alas, the same PC platform that pledges to increase interprovincial mobility has also entirely dropped any promise to build 1.5 milliion new homes by 2031, and the Ford government was already looking wobbly on that issue even before the election was called.
Can the newfound love of interprovincial trade survive contact with Ontario’s terrible performance on the housing file? I’m skeptical. But it’s going to be amusing to find out.