Slashing red tape earns Ontario a B- from the CFIB

The Ontario government has been given a better grade in the latest data from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.

The McGuinty government has ripped up the rule books for doing business in Ontario and made a dent in the reduction of red tape involved.

It has done away with about 80-thousand rules and regulations in the last four years. That number is an improvement of about 17 per cent.

The improvement earned the province a B-, which is a big improvement over the C- from last year.

This news has Satinder Vhera, CFIB’s Ontario vice-president beaming.

“Well, giving credit where credit is due. They’ve gone ahead and they’ve actually had the guts to publish the number of regulations that they oversee. It’s something that not many governments want to do.”

Vhera says this is a model he would like to see the government continue.

“They’ve actually made a dent. They’ve put some constraints on themselves. They’ve cut 80,000 regulations so they’re setting targets and it’s something that we want for them to continue doing in the future.”

The contentious introduction of the Harmonized Sales Tax wiped 5,000 pages of outdated rules off the books in one fell swoop, according to the Economic Development and Innovation Minister Brad Duguid.

He said that move saves Ontario businesses half-a-billion dollars a year.

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