Ontario’s Minister of Small Business and Red Tape Reduction, the Hon. Prabmeet Sarkaria tabled another red tape reduction bill this afternoon, Supporting Recovery and Competitiveness Act. This bill, along with regulatory and policy changes, is aimed at modernizing and streamlining government, improving provincial rules and processes affecting people and businesses. It aims to make Ontario more competitive and support economic recovery by accelerating business growth, attracting investment, and creating jobs. At the same time, it aims to enhance policies that protect our environment, health and safety.
Minister Sarkaria’s bi-annual red tape reduction packages have become a hallmark of the Ford Government which according to the 2020 Annual Report, suggests that the government is among the top performing provinces in regulatory modernization in Canada. In its annual Red Tape Report Card, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business graded Ontario with an A- in this space.
This is the second Red Tape Reduction bi-annual package that Sarkaria has delivered during COVID-19 despite many other initiatives across government shifting to the backburner. Like the previous packages introduced, this Package contains a myriad of roughly 80 changes to government legislation, regulation and policies and removes complex and outdated rules. It takes a whole-of-government approach and includes changes that affect almost every ministry. As always, Sarkaria’s package aims to align government with the 7 modern regulatory principles that the government placed into law in 2020’s Modernizing Ontario for People and Business Act. It makes efforts to prioritize important issues and harmonize rules with the federal government and other provinces. This Package builds on previous red tape reduction packages to modernize government while positioning Ontario’s economy to succeed long-term in a post-pandemic world.
We encourage you to have a look at the bill or review the government’s news release, backgrounder or additional resources, as we can’t highlight the more than 80 proposed changes .
Highlights of the Package:
Among many others…
We expect clarity on the regulatory and policy changes introduced in this package will be forthcoming as the regulatory changes will be posted to the appropriate regulatory registry in the coming days and promised consultations are launched. Meanwhile, legislative changes were introduced in the Supporting Recovery and Competitiveness Act this afternoon.