by Gail Ferrier

From coast to coast, stretched-to-the-limit entrepreneurs flounder in paperwork while government bureaucrats churn out idiotic rules!

In a 1995 report, the Treasury Board of Canada stated, "There are more than 40,000 pages of federal regulations that Canadians find difficult to understand and that are often redundant and obsolete." No Kidding… and that’s just the ones they don’t think we understand?

It’s not just the feds either… for example, the Workers Compensation Act in British Columbia was amended in April 1998 resulting in 1,400 more regulations on top of the existing 4,000. Much of this paperwork is definitely of the make-work variety like the WCB rules that require every business in BC with more than 20 employees to establish a safety committee with at least four members. The committee must then meet at least once a month during normal working hours. I ask you, does this make sense?

Municipal bylaws add to the burden across the country. The cost of all this bureaucracy is devastatingly high – approximately $83 billion a year. That’s $4,250.00 for every taxpayer, according to the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute.

Our city halls are more into red tape than development. "They don’t make it easy for the little guys," says one mid-size builder. No wonder the underground market is thriving.

Innovation is stopped cold by regulation and unfounded fear of competition, says Warren Gil, a professor at Simon Fraser University. Seventy-eight percent of businesses in Canada have fewer than 5 employees. With so little manpower the last thing they need is more government paperwork to get yet another permit.

I did find one province that was taking steps to cut through the red tape. Newfoundland eliminated 171 required permits and licenses in 1992. The province reviewed a further 2,400 regulations in 1994-1995 and proceeded to eliminate 1,100 more.

In a real brave step for provincial bureaucrats they also set up a one-stop shopping for most of the remaining permits and licenses on their books. According to Weldon Moores, a senior director in Newfoundland’s Department of Government Services and Lands, "We’re trying to make it less onerous for people to do business." 

We have countless rules that the average person is not even aware of until they try to do something. Could this initiative dampening bureaucracy be the reason Canada is not a dynamic business environment? Just wondering…