For too long, Canada has treated skilled immigration and interprovincial mobility as parallel tracks when, in fact, they are deeply interlinked. The Agreement on Internal Trade (AIT) and its successor, the Canadian Free Trade Agreement (CFTA), were meant to allow people, not just goods and services, to move freely across this vast country. However, for far too long, internal barriers to labour mobility remained stubbornly intact, and though provinces are making commitments to remove those barriers, action is long overdue.
Ontario, as the largest economic engine and most diverse province in the federation, has the means, moral authority, and strategic imperative to pilot a new model that harnesses the untapped power of internationally trained individuals (ITIs) already living within our borders.
The AIT and CFTA labour mobility provisions represent a revolutionary, if under-utilized, idea: that a certified worker in one part of Canada should be able to work in another without having to start over. For many Canadians, especially those in regulated professions, barriers remain; for skilled immigrants, those regulations are often a cruel joke.