Canada is developing complementary supply chain compliance measures around due diligence and forced labour enforcement. The legal obligations may differ, but much of the underlying evidence can overlap. This article examines why Canada should build that evidence for lawful reuse rather than creating a new compliance silo for every regulatory purpose.

Why interoperability should now be treated as trade infrastructure Canada has spent generations building the infrastructure that moves trade. Ports. Railways. Roads. Airports. Terminals. Border crossings. Those assets remain fundamental. But another layer is becoming just as important to whether a shipment actually moves efficiently: the information, records, approvals and evidence that have to move with it. That is why I believe we need to broaden the way we define a Canadia

What does trusted digital trade actually look like in practice? This walkthrough follows one Canadian export through three critical handoffs—electronic records, compliance evidence, and structured cross-border data—and shows what institutions would need to assess before paper can be replaced with confidence.

Digital trade is moving online. But digital records, AI compliance outputs, and cross-border data are only useful if they can be trusted by parties that don't share the same system. The trust layer is the missing infrastructure between digitization and real adoption.