Red tape and regulations are a perennial Ottawa issue, like interprovincial trade barriers or softwood lumber. Stakeholders raise it. Governments nod. Everyone agrees it’s a big problem. But no one seems to land a lasting fix.
Still, every new government takes its turn. Prime Minister Mark Carney’s team is up next. We wish them luck.
On July 9, the government told ministers and federal regulators to identify outdated, duplicative or needlessly burdensome rules and to report back within 60 days. That deadline is today. A new Red Tape Reduction Office at Treasury Board will track the proposed pruning.
The exercise will meet cautious optimism at best, and extreme cynicism at worst. The question is simple. Does this effort shrink the stock of legacy rules, or does it become another review added to the pile of toothless reform? If it’s the latter, it will be another tribute to incrementalism that has changed very little.
We’ve had plenty of kicks at the can.
Over the past 15 years under two previous prime ministers, there was a Red Tape Reduction Commission that led to the Red Tape Reduction Act. A Centre for Regulatory Innovation. Rounds of sector reviews. An external advisory committee on regulatory competitiveness. Cross-border regulatory harmonization forums with the United States and the European Union. A federal-provincial-territorial table on regulations. Cabinet directives. And yet we have barely made a dent.
The current pillar of today’s strategy, the one-for-one policy that requires government to eliminate one rule if they add a new burden, has removed about $82 million in administrative burden by the government’s own count over the past decade. But that’s a drop in a big bucket. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business puts total regulatory costs at roughly $52 billion in 2024.
