2025 offers a unique window of opportunity to improve Canadian competitiveness
For much of the last decade, Canada’s competitiveness and productivity levels have been a quiet undercurrent in national conversations, a slow burn behind the more pressing headlines of partisan disputes, climate goals, or inflation.
But as the 2025 federal election was approaching, the dynamic slowly but surely shifted towards a completely different economic discussion than the most common over the past years.
Indeed, throughout the campaign, much of the political debate centred on the uncertainty surrounding the Canada and U.S trade relationship. For our industry specifically, this wave of insecurity was rooted in a legitimate argument: everything auto in North America is deeply, deeply integrated with the U.S. economy and manufacturing capacity.
However, that uncertainty, insecurity and fear has sparked something else — a sentiment that could bring our economy, and industry, in a truly different era.
The conversation in Canada expanded beyond defending against external threats and started to incorporate important economic narratives about our own competitiveness, such as the need to invest in modern infrastructure, make productivity a national focus and even cautiously de-risking from an overreliance on the U.S., our current largest trade partner.
While this is was never a call to sever the deep and valuable economic links with the U.S., it reflects a maturing realization that prosperity requires more than hoping for stability south of the border.
Obviously, with the too-common overly curated visit of a local farm or factory, each election cycle is marked by politicians publicly promoting and supporting various causes. In reality, something unique and important came with the inevitable discussion on the growth of Canadian industry: a more developed argument and proposed policies on internal economic resilience.
Now, with Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government settling in over the next few months, there’s growing political will to focus on productivity, economic resilience, and domestic coordination — not just as a reaction to American uncertainty, but as a necessary foundation for long-term prosperity.
While this is was never a call to sever the deep and valuable economic links with the U.S., it reflects a maturing realization that prosperity requires more than hoping for stability south of the border. It’s about cultivating — and generating — more opportunities here at home.
For the Canadian automotive industry, that means producing new innovative policies and eliminating ineffective ones, expanding regulatory frameworks and fostering an environment where competition drives the market, not partisan initiatives.
Naturally, the low hanging fruit that came out of this sort of national introspection has been the interprovincial trade conversation. The resurgence of this long-forgotten but important economic debate came from the public leadership of many Canadian premiers, notably Nova Scotia’s Tim Houston, which has injected fresh momentum into reducing the regulatory friction that continues to segment Canada’s internal market.
For dealers, whose operations can sometimes span multiple provinces, this is long overdue. Regulatory differences, accessibility and vehicle cost, skilled worker shortages — many challenges they are facing aren’t confined to provincial boundaries the way our rules often do.
Streamlining regulations between provinces could reduce business costs, speed up vehicle sale and delivery, and enhance labour mobility, which are all critical factors in boosting efficiency in today’s challenging and rapidly changing market.
But while the ambition is real, it would be naive to believe this will unfold without friction. Many of the barriers in place today stem from deeply embedded regional policies, economic structures, or institutional preferences.
They didn’t emerge overnight, and dismantling them will be just as complex. In many cases, trade barriers exist because they protect certain interests, some more evident than others, and that means reform will quickly become political.
But even clear progress on the interprovincial front — which still remains to be seen — won’t be enough. This discussion was needed before and during the election, but it also allowed the provincial Premiers to show leadership in a time where there was none of it at the federal level.
If we’re serious about long-term progress in boosting competitiveness and helping small businesses grow, the federal government cannot step back and watch provinces carry the weight. Ottawa has a direct role to play in ensuring national policies support, rather than hinder, small businesses such as automotive dealerships.
That’s where auto dealers come in. As one of the largest private-sector employers in the country, operating in nearly every riding and bridging urban-rural divides, our sector is uniquely placed to demonstrate how the automotive retail industry is often negatively affected by interprovincial trade barriers or by federal policies and regulations.
That means alleviating some of the inflationary impacts of tariffs on vehicles and parts, and it also means reviewing current political or regulatory burdens that are limiting the ability of dealers to be competitive, to optimize their operations and to receive products that are less costly and accessible.
In that sense, the Canadian Automotive Dealers Association recently launched a five-part Automotive Competitiveness Framework which lays out a clear roadmap for how the federal government can act, not in isolation but in partnership with industry, to improve the competitiveness of Canada’s auto sector.
It calls for pragmatic, realistic, applicable targeted actions that would unlock efficiencies, ease affordability pressures, and ultimately benefit Canadian consumers.
Improving our economic resilience has never been about grand gestures and immense costly programs. It’s about practical steps, informed by the reality that auto dealers and consumers are facing, that can remove unnecessary barriers in a time of economic uncertainty.
The opportunity to rethink Canada’s economic playbook is here, because it seems as if both politicians and common folk are ready to have that discussion. It will require leadership from provinces, the automotive sector and private sector at large, but it will truly start and end with a federal government willing to do more than admit the problem.
The next few months will inform many Canadians on if this discourse about strengthening our economy was legitimate or the usual electoral ploy. In any case, if our elected leaders are showing true intent to improve Canada’s competitiveness, automobile dealers are and will be ready to help.
