The Barrie region carries real trade risk, even as some Canadian cities make meaningful progress on cutting their dependence on the United States.
That's the takeaway for local businesses from a new report by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, which found that export diversification in 2025 was largely driven by a handful of cities while much of the country, especially Ontario's manufacturing belt, fell behind.
Barrie wasn't included in the report's city rankings, but Paul Markle, executive director of the Barrie Chamber of Commerce, says the region is not insulated from the broader trend.
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"While not as exposed as automotive-heavy centres like Windsor or Oshawa, there is still significant industrial activity tied to those supply chains, leaving the area with a fair degree of trade vulnerability," Markle told Barrie 360.
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A handful of cities are driving Canada's gains
The report found that Calgary, Ottawa-Gatineau, Toronto, Saskatoon, and Kelowna led the country in growing exports outside the U.S. last year.
Calgary and Ottawa-Gatineau posted the biggest jumps, with non-U.S. exports rising 64.67 per cent and 64.04 per cent, respectively, between 2024 and 2025. Toronto followed at 32.82 per cent, Saskatoon at 32.04 per cent, and Kelowna at 28.63 per cent.
Nationally, non-U.S. exports grew 16.8 per cent.
The chamber says that small group of cities accounts for a disproportionate share of Canada's recent diversification gains, "reinforcing how uneven the country's trade adjustment remains across regions."
Ontario's manufacturing cities are struggling
For cities built around manufacturing, the picture is considerably worse.
The report flags Oshawa, London, and Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo as showing "some of the clearest signs of trade-related economic stress." These cities remain heavily tied to the U.S. market, and growth in exports elsewhere hasn't been enough to offset the broader strain on their local economies.
The chamber describes a "growing divergence" between cities successfully breaking into global markets and those still leaning heavily on American demand.
Local businesses are in a wait-and-see mode
Markle says Barrie-area manufacturers are caught between wanting to expand and waiting for some stability before they move.
"A key issue is uncertainty around trade policy and a general wait-and-see approach, particularly as businesses look for clarity on whether federal action will further reduce interprovincial trade barriers and make domestic business easier," he said.
He also notes that breaking into overseas markets isn't cheap. For most local firms, the U.S. remains a secondary but important market, and the focus right now is on making the most of existing trade relationships while working within current tariff rules.
That lines up with what the national data shows. Statistics Canada figures cited in the report suggest most Canadian businesses are "adapting cautiously" rather than making fundamental changes. Firms are more likely to raise prices, source more domestically, or delay expansion than to actively pursue new markets outside North America.
The number of Canadian exporters selling to non-U.S. markets grew by just six per cent year over year. Most of the export growth came from companies that were already selling abroad, not new players entering the game.
The stakes are getting higher
Canada's federal government wants to double non-U.S. exports over the next decade. The spring economic update reported that non-U.S. goods and services exports rose by $33 billion in 2025 compared to 2024, a meaningful number but still concentrated in a small portion of the country.
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Trump's sector-specific tariffs on steel, aluminum, automobiles, and cabinetry continue to squeeze Canadian exporters. The Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement is due for review this year, but the broader trade environment is widely expected to stay volatile.
About 90 per cent of non-exporting Canadian businesses still describe their operations as local, according to the report, which warns that firms may be underinvesting in long-term diversification "at precisely the moment when resilience and market expansion are becoming more important to competitiveness and growth."
Candace Laing, president and CEO of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, put it plainly.
"Some Canadian cities are adapting quickly to this era of repeated global economic shocks, while others remain highly exposed to U.S. policy and demand uncertainty," she said. "Canada does not just need more trade, it needs more traders."
*With files from CP
