One gravel and trucking company on the Manitoba-Saskatchewan border hopes it will get easier to do business across provinces in the next year.
The conversation around alleviating interprovincial trade barriers has intensified amid U.S. tariffs in the last year, to protect and strengthen the Canadian economy, but some in the Prairie trucking industry say they haven’t seen much progress.
McKeen’s Trucking in the border city of Flin Flon, Sask., delivers gravel to job sites on both sides of the border. The company, located about 500 metres from the border, must navigate two sets of provincial rules.
“We’re having to do two of everything a lot of the time,” said owner Robert McKeen last month.
“I always like to say we’re a country made up of multiple little countries.”
Between safety, regulatory and tax differences, there are also permits required to haul inside Manitoba.
His Saskatchewan-based company is allowed to do business in Manitoba without a permit, but only within a 30-kilometre radius of the border.
Anything further demands more paperwork, more money and more time, including if they transported gravel to Cranberry Portage, Man., a community just over 30 kilometres southeast of Flin Flon.
It’s an alternative McKeen said his company opted for over using the International Fuel Tax Agreement (IFTA), a program that can make it easier for interjurisdictional carriers to pay and track fuel taxes in each province or state, but which he says isn’t financially worthwhile for his company.
Also, to bid on contracts in both provinces, for example, McKeen said his company has to be certified through a Certificate of Recognition program (COR) in each one.
The national occupational health and safety standard for the construction industry is delivered and monitored by separate associations across provinces and territories, which McKeen says comes with audits from each one.
“It’s national, but it’s not really national. It’s provincial,” McKeen said.
The company’s heavy vehicles are also safetied annually, but that happens once a year in Manitoba versus twice a year in Saskatchewan.
“Every province has small differences, but ultimately for a business, when you’re located where we are, it makes a big difference.”
National database called for
Manitoba passed the Fair Trade in Canada (Internal Trade Mutual Recognition) Act in June to get rid of some trade barriers for goods and services, a provincial spokesperson said in an email.
The act excludes goods and services by Crown corporations and services done by regulated occupations, they wrote.
Manitoba also signed memorandums of understanding with five provinces, including Saskatchewan, in 2025 to improve labour mobility and trade.
The Manitoba Trucking Association says despite “good conversations” around aligning provincial regulatory requirements in trucking, including some that predate U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest term, the industry hasn’t seen many practical changes, executive director Aaron Dolyniuk told CBC News last week.
“It’s my hope that this remains a priority. A lot of these discussions are not simple. They’re very technical,” Dolyniuk said.
Provinces continue to duplicate — and triplicate — regulations by implementing national standards in their own way, which create complexities and paperwork for companies, especially those hauling non-regular loads, he said.
The differences could mean how a jurisdiction defines sunrise and sunset, what flags or lighting are needed for each truck, and whether it requires an escort.
“A trucking company has to deal with each province individually when it comes to getting the right permits,” Dolyniuk said.
“In some cases, that will lead to delays,” or a driver being forced to put “a ladder on the side of a load on the side of the road” to change flags and lights.
The industry would benefit from making provincial permitting processes more similar and managing them under one online portal, Dolyniuk said.
He says the sector has also long called for one national database of performance records, known as a carrier profile system, to manage and regulate safety in trucking, instead of each province doing it separately, which can see bad actors close shop in one province and reopen in another.
“It creates all sorts of challenges, whether it’s compliance, whether it’s an even competitive playing field,” Dolyniuk said.
“Let’s look at a way of ensuring that those high standards exist but ensuring that they exist sort of evenly across the country,” he said.
“The provinces have to be willing, but Transport Canada also has to step up and quite frankly, take responsibility for some of it as well.”
MOU on interprovincial trucking being developed
Minister Jamie Moses, who oversees business and trade in Manitoba, said the province is committed to facilitating interprovincial trade while maintaining safety standards, and continues to work with Ottawa and other provincial governments on a trucking pilot launched in 2024.
“We’ve been working very closely with associations like the Manitoba Trucking Association to align differences and things like axle weights and signage,” Moses said in an interview.
The Manitoba government spokesperson says the Council of Ministers Responsible for Transportation and Highway Safety is developing a memorandum of understanding on interprovincial trucking, aiming to cut costs and duplications while harmonizing processes and regulations for the sector.
In an emailed statement, Transport Canada says the MOU could mean clearer regulations for companies and fewer differences between provinces, which will lead to reduced administrative burdens over time.
“While there will not be immediate changes to day-to-day operations, the MOU is an important step toward longer-term alignments across jurisdictions,” a spokesperson with Transport Canada said Monday.
According to the Canadian Trucking Alliance, the pilot has helped Manitoba and other western provinces identify requirements that could be aligned for long-combination vehicles, which pull two or more semi-trailers.
Dolyniuk says the group is close to reaching a memorandum of understanding.
The Manitoba Trucking Association says businesses in the industry continue to grapple with interprovincial issues every day, despite a national conversation on alleviating barriers in light of American tariffs. One company on the Manitoba-Saskatchewan border says navigating two sets of provincial rules adds administrative burdens to its daily operations.
