Mr. McGuinty’s recent epiphany regarding regulatory red-tape caused me at first to blush with flattery as I fell red-faced off my chair in disbelief. However, I have since regained my composure and want to be the first to welcome the Premier to my fight against counter-productive, job killing red tape, and over-zealous regulatory enforcement by the Liberal Government.
As the Premier recently announced that Ontario has over 500,000 provincial laws and regulations that are killing jobs and investments, I had an epiphany as well: how much is a half million? I then tried to record all the activities an individual or business might engage in - after thoughtful and lengthy consideration I couldn’t get past one hundred. I could not and cannot begin to fathom half a million activities, let alone half a million illegal activities. How is anyone really to know if they are law-abiding or breaking the law with so many rules? How can we expect anyone in Ontario to understand what’s lawful and what is not in this regulatory trap that government has incrementally sprung upon us?
Investment and job creation by our small and medium sized businesses has withered under the multiple layers of bureaucratic obstacles and approval processes. While the Liberal government demands people and business climb this unseen mountain of 500,000 provincial regulations, their hands dig deeper into their pockets searching for more taxes pushing Ontario deeper into have-not status and recession. The Premiers acknowledgement that these roadblocks, interferences, and red tape are problems is a refreshing 180-degree turn from the ‘nanny state’ tune he has sung to the province since 2003.
Admitting that over 500,000 regulations on the books are choking prosperity in Ontario is step one. Rectifying the problem is step two. First however, I feel the need to remind people it was the Liberal government who dismantled the Red Tape Commission in 2003. The evidence of that folly is as clear as our recent ‘have not’ status. I might suggest a few areas that I have been focusing on during my time at Queen’s Park as places to begin working together in a comprehensive manner:
Create an All Party Legislative Committee to review all current and new legislation to ensure the legislation and accompanying regulatory implications are not counter-productive, do not impose an undue burden, or infringe upon a person’s freedom of opportunity to find prosperity.
Return regulatory control to the Legislature and empower elected officials to constrain the explosive regulatory growth created by the growing and unaccountable bureaucracy.
Simple is better. Regulations now are so complicated that people can’t understand them, keep up with them, or comply with them.
Eliminate or diminish the hundreds and hundreds of un-elected, unaccountable agencies, boards and commissions that add to the bureaucratic, multi-layered approval processes and delay investment.
If any of these suggestions seem familiar, it is because they were the foundations of my Private Member’s Bill: The Red Tape and Regulatory Review Act, which the Liberal Government soundly defeated in a whipped vote in April 2008. I would suggest this Bill be re-visited as a framework to return regulatory responsibility to the Legislature.
Over-regulation and the proliferation of red tape impose obligations and constraints on the private sector with costs impossible to assess. They are often more onerous than the legislated rules themselves. Let’s reign in the un-elected regulatory writers and cut the red tape, remove burdensome regulation, and return Ontario’s prosperity by removing the half a million traps that have laid. With step one in the can, let’s get moving on step two.
I hope that the Premiers’ new tune is not just another one of those orchestrated promises we have heard before, like no new taxes, closing coal plants, and too many others to list here.
Randy Hillier, MPP Lanark Frontenac Lennox, is a co-founder of the Lanark Landowners Association, which was brought to life to address government imposition on the rights of private property owners, and to address the regressive regulatory impositions that government was bringing down upon farmers and business owners in rural Ontario.
In 2006, Randy resigned as President of the OLA in order to run as a candidate for the Progressive Conservatives. Randy was elected in the 2007 provincial election.
Randy a long-time resident of Lanark County, an electrician by trade and member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), continues to co-publish and edit rural Ontario’s successful magazine “The Landowner.”
