Red-tape crusade gets nod from CFIB
Saskatchewan gets a mark of “B” for its efforts in fighting red tape, a business group says.
The Canadian Federation of Independent Business, in the middle of its sixth annual Red Tape Awareness Week, puts Saskatchewan in the middle of the pack among Canadian governments on this issue.
“Saskatchewan’s doing a lot of things right,” CFIB spokeswoman Marilyn Braun-Pollen said Tuesday. “It’s on the right track.”
At a joint government federation news conference, Braun-Pollen said red tape “isn’t to be confused with deregulation”, defining red tape as unnecessary, confusing information, and hard -to-understand regulations — and bad customer service from government agencies that add to the expense and time needed to run a small business.
Jeremy Harrison, provincial cabinet minister responsible for overseeing its campaign against red tape, added the government will make “no compromises” on public safety, the environment or worker safety.
“It’s not deregulation — it’s better regulation, smarter regulation,” he said, listing several examples of this work, like a recent streamlining of regulations and fees covering oil and gas development and changes to wildlife regulations that trimmed rules, some while doubling penalties for a series of wildlife offences and banning from hunting in the province anybody with three convictions for serious offences.
He also mentioned changes to occupational health and safety regulations that reduce the number of reports that must be filed by the province’s 6,100 OHS committees, thus freeing up government OHS inspectors for regular duties.
“This is a process, not an event,” said Harrison, adding, “it takes many years to address regulatory burdens.”
In the CFIB’s report card, B.C. got an “A” for its red tape crusade, while Quebec, Ontario and the federal governments all notched a “B”
Ranked below Saskatchewan was Newfoundland and Labrador with a “C”, then PEI and the Yukon (both with “D+”) and Alberta and Manitoba with a mark of “D”.
Nova Scotia got a “D-” and the Northwest Territories an “F”. No ranking was applied to New Brunswick, which elected a new government a few months ago.
The first day of Red Tape Awareness Week saw the CFIB give its satirical Paperweight Award — for the heaviest burden dumped onto small businesses — to the chairman of the federal telecommunication regulator for its 2013 anti-spam rule requiring small businesses to confirm customers want to keep receiving their emails.
Second place was a tie: a Quebec mayor who required restaurants to scrap (for “esthetic reasons”) huge numbers of outdoor chairs and buy expensive replacements plus an Ontario government rule that copies of its policies and regulations be printed only on legal-size paper — instead of much more common letter-size sheets.