by Neville Gilfoy (not verified)

There’s much talk across the region about the Atlantic Gateway, international trade, and transportation infrastructure. In Progress, we regularly debate and promote all of the concepts and initiatives on those topics, but to see tangible benefits, we need major political action on many fronts. One such front is trucking regulations.

Roughly four years ago, the four Atlantic Canadian premiers announced that, finally, trucking regulations would be harmonized. Hallelujah! But today no such harmonization exists or is even on the horizon, and that’s a serious problem for everyone. Trucks move goods to market both here and abroad. Trucks burn fuel, the price of which is skyrocketing. This is driving prices of all goods upward.

So why harmonize trucking regulations? There are four different sets of rules for truckers and their trucks in our Atlantic Canadian provinces—that’s different environmental, safety, weight, tax, and tariff regulations resulting in increased costs and slower movement. You could say that because there has been a federal initiative to harmonize these regulations across the entire country, provincial officials have been waylaid on the regional agenda, and therefore there is justification for why nothing is happening. That might be true, but it’s just an excuse. The attempt to harmonize nationally is onerous, overwhelming, and not gaining much ground, and other provinces have backed away.

It’s imperative that our premiers and transportation ministers harmonize our region’s trucking regulations. The cost of not doing so is simply too great. Harmonization would streamline the movement of goods, ensure minimum environmental damage, make our highways safer, and counter the rising costs of goods due to fuel-price increases.

This has been a transparent issue that, while affecting every Atlantic Canadian, is not in our faces every day. As a result, politicians haven’t had to address it with any seriousness. That can’t go on, because this is an important issue for all of us. I’d encourage you to do what you can to make it an important issue for the premier of your province. If we can make that happen, everyone will benefit—by having cleaner air, safer highways, and more money in our pockets.