Bureaucratic red tape strangles Ontario business
By Toby Barrett, MPP

Red tape, rules and regulations and the attendant paper-work and bureaucracy often lead to a discussion of conflicting demands. People, from many quarters, demand regulation to achieve social or safety or environmental goals. At the same time people expect government to cut costs, to cut bureaucracy and to cut red tape.

Businesses, farmers and entrepreneurs in Ontario have become increasingly frustrated with growing government regulation - the filling out of seemingly unnecessary paperwork, obtaining unnecessary licenses, having multiple people or committees approve decisions, and various low-level rules that make conducting one's affairs slower, more difficult, and more costly. The Toronto Star indicates that provincial ministries currently have a total of 500,000 regulatory requirements on their books.

I am presently travelling the province on the Finance Committee for pre-budget hearings – an opportunity for public input that I take part in every year. Last year, our Finance Committee heard from several groups on how the regulatory burden was negatively impacting businesses in their sector.

For example, the Ontario Road Builders’ Association reported the Ministry of the Environment actually prevented their member businesses from recycling. Karen Renkema told the committee: “we’re finding that we’re paying to dump our excess construction materials and landfill at this point because they are not being able to be reused because of the regulatory issues with the Ministry of the Environment”

Finance Committee testimony also saw the President of the Ontario Chamber of Commerce, Len Crispino state: “We must, once and for all, dramatically slash the red tape that continues to impede business.

CEO of the Chartered Management Accountants of Ontario, Merv Hillier warned: “If you want growth in Ontario, then you have to make it easy for business to do business here.”

Following the hearings last year the Official Opposition challenged the McGuinty Government, in the strongest possible terms, to set and commit to real targets to reduce the regulatory burden on all businesses - including the implementation of a substantive Red Tape Reduction Act. We are still waiting for any substantive response.

It is not surprising that a Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) research study on government regulation indicated that: 73 per cent of members feel regulations cause significant stress, 62 per cent indicate that complying with regulation stakes time away from friends and family, and 26 per cent of business owners say if they had known the burden of regulation, they may not have gone into business.

If you are fed up, we in the Opposition, invite you to share your experiences with burdensome regulations at www.tiredofredtape.ca.

Regrettably the situation is worsening in Ontario.

The recently passed Toxic Reduction Act contains a very bad example of how Ontario’s regulatory environment can punish our food and agriculture sectors.  In the case of flour milling, the end product – flour – would be considered particulate matter and, believe it or not, would be classified under the Toxics Reduction Act as toxic.

The fight to ensure food and feed materials are not declared toxic has been joined by the Grain Farmers of Ontario, the Ontario Alliance of Food Processors, the Ontario Agri-Business Association, the Canadian National Millers Association – all requesting a clarification of the act to state that food and feed products are not toxic.

The battle against red tape continues.