Ontario gets top marks for cutting red tape
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While the Ford government may be getting boos from angry teachers these days, it is getting sustained rounds of applause from the province’s small business community.
The Canadian Federation of Independent Business, which represents roughly 42,000 small businesses across the province, has given the Ford government an A- score on their annual Red Tape Report Card.
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“We applaud the government for staying the course on reducing unnecessary, excessive and duplicative rules,” said Julie Kwiecinski, CFIB’s director of provincial affairs.
Kwiecinski said the government is creating the right framework to let small business flourish. She noted it is the second year in a row the province has received an A- mark, up from a C+ under the former Liberal government.
“Some regulations exist for a good reason, but many others stand in the way of small business success,” she said.
Prabmeet Sarkaria, the Ford government’s associate minister of small business and red tape reduction, described the award as a recognition that the PC government is on the right track.
“We’ve done four red tape pieces of legislation within two years and (have) a fifth one coming up,” Sarkaria said.
It’s part of fulfilling Premier Doug Ford’s promise to cut 25% of the more than 386,000 regulations that existed when the PCs were elected. While Sarkaria acknowledged many regulations exist to protect health, the environment and consumers, not all do.
“Some regulations are duplicates, they overlap, they’re overly complex, they cost Ontario good jobs and prevent companies from growing,” Sarkaria said.
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Prior to taking the scissors to the red tape, the province estimated that the cost to comply with regulations in Ontario worked out to $33,000 per company, much higher than the $25,000 to $27,000 companies face in other provinces.
Sarkaria noted that some of the scrapped regulations were excessive such as those forcing food banks and soup kitchens to have industrial-grade kitchen equipment to hand out sandwiches or ones making hairdressers have a third sink to handle equipment that might come in contact with blood — as if they were tattoo artists.
He also cited ending a regulation that banned dogs on restaurant patios.
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