The Canadian Federation of Independent Business has given BC an “A” grade by reducing red tape.
The provincial government adopted the one for one policy in 2004 where a new rule would come in and another comes out.
That’s a far cry to where the province was in 2001 according to CFIB Analyst Laura Jones.
“Restaurants were being told what size televisions they could have, forest companies had a whole prescriptive pile of rules they had to comply with and being told what size of nails they could use while building small bridges over streams. A lot of that low hanging fruit has been cleaned up.”
The BC government has reduced red tape rules by 47% over the past 15 years.
The recent success is quickly becoming the envy of north america according to Jones.
“I’m getting calls from Illinois, Kentucky, and Virginia saying we want to do what British Columbia did because one of the only models of success is from this province and most jurisdictions keep piling on the rules suffocating things that we care about like job security and prosperity.”
BC’s rosy outlook is way better than the current situation in Alberta. “Alberta gets an F on our report card because they just don’t see this as a priority and to the extent that they do see regulatory release as a priority they don’t believe transparent public measures with a target to reduce is the way to go about it.”
The CFIB would like to see BC make the one for one policy into law in the future.
Here is the grades by jurisdiction.
British Columbia A
Quebec A
Saskatchewan B
Nova Scotia B
Federal Government B
Ontario B-
Prince Edward Island C+
New Brunswick C+
Newfoundland and Labrador C
Manitoba D+
Northwest Territories F
Alberta F
Yukon N/A