OTTAWA — Ottawa needs to give Canada’s competition watchdog greater powers so that it can lead the battle to break down protectionist inter-provincial trade barriers, a leading authority on the subject said Wednesday at a competition policy event.

Ryan Manucha, a research fellow at the C.D. Howe Institute think tank and the author of an award-winning book on inter-provincial free trade, said Canada’s Competition Bureau should be given new “soft power” to lead efforts to get provinces and territories to a “mutual recognition” of a host of rules and regulations.

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Canada needs an institutionalized watchdog for internal trade and the Competition Bureau is the natural choice because it has experience at policing anti-competitive practices, Manucha said. The result would be

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