Development of the Internal Trade Barriers (ITB) Index

Industry Canada requires services to develop an Internal Trade Barriers (ITB) Index and its supporting inventory of barriers by jurisdiction (i.e., province/territory), thematic category/policy area (e.g., policies, standards, regulations, rules, and other requirements), and affected industry/sector. The overall goal of this project is to develop an ITB Index that will allow the extent of various trade barriers across provinces and territories to be assessed over time.

The ITB Index is to be modelled on the Services Trade Restrictiveness Index (STRI) developed by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) as well as measures developed by the World Bank and Australia for the purpose of comparing the restrictiveness of the trade practices and regulations of various countries, adapted as appropriate to assess internal trade barriers in Canada. The ITB Index will summarize the preferential treatment or other measures, including the lack of harmonization across provinces and territories in policies, standards, rules, regulations and other requirements, that restrict inter-jurisdictional flows of goods, services and factors of production.

The ITB Index and its underlying inventory will be useful for identifying options to address barriers to internal trade in Canada. In addition, the ITB Index will provide a means of comparing the degree of integration of various provinces and territories. Over time, the ITB Index will also provide a simple metric for measuring progress on the reduction of internal trade barriers.