Write-one-drop-two the rule in Ontario government regulations
Promise kept! Provincial red tape reduced

Anybody who has ever had to wring a cheque out of a major corporation knows all about red tape and bureaucracy. And delays and paperwork too. What often surprises folks is that the 21st century bastions of red tape, delays, bureaucracy, and volumes of regulations, polies, directives and procedures are no longer the government and public sectors, but are now the private sector!

Who says so? Well, try the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB), usually no fan of any entity with anything but a right-wing agenda. In their annual focus on raising awareness of red tape, and improving government-to-business services, they really ought to shift some of their focus on the business-to-business economy, giving it the same degree of scrutiny accorded to government.

Last year, CFIB ranked Ontario with a C-. This year, the Province has, according to their mysterious metrics, risen a full grade point, to a B-. Well, that may be a grudging compliment, but in these times, one should smile and be gracious for just about any good word.

The truth is that Ontario has taken significant steps in the past few years to make the Province a more attractive place to work, play, study and raise a family. In fact, since 2008 alone, Ontario has eliminated more than 80,000 regulatory requirements. By the way, that represents a 17 percent reduction, which means overall, where there were six regulations before, there are five today.

People who draft legal agreements, or write software, know that good drafting (or coding) allows an agreement, or a software application, to re-use well-written clauses or routines. That makes the agreement easier to interpret and enforce, or the application easier to understand or debug. All in all, it just runs faster and better. That's the same philosophy behind Ontario's push to reduce paperwork, regulations and red tape, and it too is working. You don't have a weaker regulatory framework, you have a more effective one, with fewer areas of overlap, less paperwork, and fewer decisions needed in order to do business.

Tax reforms, including the introduction of the HST in 2010, have streamlined administration with the federal government, and eliminated the need to fill out duplicate forms. Often the same form can have two or three additional lines, or fields, and that is all that's needed to do the same job. For example, the move to the HST alone eliminated 5,000 pages of outdated rules, regulations and procedures. The savings to business: $500 million each and every year!

I know from sitting in meetings that Ministries proposing to add regulations need to achieve a net savings of two regulations eliminated for every new one added. Overall, since 2008, Ontario has actually exceeded this target. Reducing the regulatory burden on businesses, and giving them the tools they need to create jobs and help people build careers, while protecting the public and the environment, is a shared priority for the Province and its business partners.

The Province has shown repeatedly that when a business tries to play fast and loose with the freedom businesses ask for to generate wealth and opportunity, the Province will step in, fire people, and fix an operation that won't play straight. That is a big part of the reason Ontario created 45 percent of all new jobs in Canada in 2011. Remember, we have about a third of the country's population.

Making Ontario's regulatory framework lean, efficient, effective and fair remains an ongoing priority for the Province. The ever-skeptical CFIB has, in 2012, recognized that the government-to-business relationship has improved, and that Ontario truly is the best place in Canada to do business.

For more information, see the Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation's Open for Business web site.