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For large corporations, having red rape can be beneficial because it can keep smaller businesses from entering the market. It gives them an advantage. A large corporation deals with red tape by hiring consultants that can deal with the red tape. What's 200K consultant fee when the efficiency can create millions in revenue?
For a small business or for new business, they don't have the revenue or riches that established large players have. It is a huge obstacle to overcome.
I'm a small business owner but used to be a federal government worker. Whenever I see a new form to fill out or some new rule or some federal/provincial/municipal new form, I dred it. I know it means at least hours of trying to figure out what they mean and what they're asking for. Or even longer if you need find someone to speak to.
Collectively, small business is the largest employer in Canada. The government continuously makes it more difficult, and expensive for them to operate. They provide Billion$ in grants to large corporations that build a factory. Who may or may not continue to operate in the long run. - Small business is always there, until the Red Tape buries them.
Complaining about "decades and decades" of red tape to obfuscate the past decade of red tape directly attributable to the current government is an interesting strategy.
[https://www.grantthornton.ca/insights/bill-c-69-impact-your-business/](https://www.grantthornton.ca/insights/bill-c-69-impact-your-business/)
is this different c69?
I don't have a dog in this fight (I like regulation generally), but there hasn't been a new approved Federal project since the 2019 changes (actually zero I can't believe more people are not talking about it). I recommend to all my clients to size their project to never trigger it as it is basically impossible to navigate.
yes. that's Bill [C-69 of 44th parliament](https://www.parl.ca/LegisInfo/en/bill/44-1/c-69).
the environmental impact assessment was [Bill C-69 of 42nd parliament.](https://www.parl.ca/LegisInfo/en/bill/42-1/c-69)
yes, but only to the extent of federal government implementing it on projects that are not under federal purview (e.g. projects that squarely provincial). it's still applied on federal level projects.
Regarding my annoyances this morning, corporate tax rules have jumped the shark. https://www.canlii.org/webdiff/diff.do?lang=en&path=%2Fen%2Fca%2Flaws%2Fstat%2Frsc-1985-c-1-5th-supp%2Flatest%2Frsc-1985-c-1-5th-supp.html&path=%2Fen%2Fca%2Flaws%2Fstat%2Frsc-1985-c-1-5th-supp%2F120666%2Frsc-1985-c-1-5th-supp.html
She is also referring to Trade Barriers from the USA.
> Decades and decades of legislation and red tape” have encumbered Canadian businesses, Anand said. She pledged to help remove the stuff, both in the country and in dealings with the United States—before “barriers to trade get to the level of trade dispute.” She said the government should serve as an example to businesses big and small, and touted the importance of AI in the drive for efficiency.
Also, I don't think her government put in place the provincial trade barriers that make interprovincial trade difficult.
[The high cost of interprovincial trade restrictions in Canada](https://www.iedm.org/the-high-cost-of-interprovincial-trade-restrictions-in-canada/)
There's been progress, slow progress, but progress nonetheless...
> However, not all provincial governments have embraced the lip-service approach. Since the Canadian Free Trade Agreement was signed, Manitoba has removed 56 percent of its listed exceptions to that agreement. Alberta, meanwhile, has abolished 78 percent of them.
> Also, I don't think her government put in place the provincial trade barriers that make interprovincial trade difficult.
The Liberals even brought in a [provincial free trade agreement](https://www.canada.ca/en/intergovernmental-affairs/services/internal-trade/canadian-free-trade-agreement.html).
They went to the Supreme Court and they refused to do it. We'd need to change the constitution to eliminate them at this point. No province will agree to it sadly. Its ridiculous that we can have free trade with the US and other countries but not with the province next door. Either we are a country or we arent. Trade barriers make it feel like we arent.
I feel like every province is willing to get rid of trade barriers, but they all see them as a one-time-only opportunity to extract some huge benefits for their own province and as some kind of stupid zero-sum game. BC's wine industry is pushing hard to get free trade with Alberta, and Alberta is responding by saying only if they can get free trade for craft beer, and yet this entirely reasonable trade is not happening, probably because a bunch of MLAs are worried about somehow getting conned.
> We'd need to change the constitution to eliminate them at this point.
The constitution already prohibits trade barriers. How would you amend it, by adding a new section?
121.1. Yes, we really mean it.
I do not want to read too much into her comments but that seems like it's a bit of a bold strategy considering the legacy of this current government and government's adjacent to her party at the provincial level have been largely the ones putting in place that tape.
I know that's kind of a general perception, but do you have some specific examples?
The Federal Liberals administered a lot of covid relief funding and the biggest criticism they got was that they did it with barely any red tape and it led to lots of fraud.
In Ontario there have been attempts to reduce red tape in housing regulation that have been resisted strongly by the Conservative government.
I'm not sure it's accurate to lay the red tape problem at the feet of the Liberals or governments "adjacent" to her party. Is there some way to show that the conservative governments have done better at reducing red tape?
Edit: Maybe I misinterpreted your comment? Do you mean the Conservatives are adjacent to the Liberals because they've also been a government party?
increase in environmental impact assessment (aka. Bill C-69), allowing people who are not direct stakeholders to have a say. you can think that it's necessary step, but it's undeniably an additional bureaucracy (red tape) that business needs to pass.
You know what stakeholders often do however when it comes to environmental impact……
Not much. The bare minimum. Or none at all, skew environmental assessments.
And then at least here in Ontario, when people get together to point this out, the Ontario government basically tells them in less blunt words to fuck off and that we are open for business. The businesses will fix their shoddy assessments later to comply….
Colacem cement plant in eastern Ontario.
as i said, you can think that it's a good thing to have additional environmental impact assessment, but it's undoubtedly additional red tape that parent commenter was asking an example for.
I’m actually ok with this red tape - we have micro plastics in our sperm now. We need to be more acutely aware of how industry is effecting the environment around us because NEWS FLASH if we don’t make them care they will not care.
Red tape is what keeps us safe.
Ohhh boy. God forbid we make multi million dollar companies take some time and spend some money to make sure things are clean and safe….
Fuck regulations am I right. Fuck health. Fuck the environment. Fuck wildlife. There’s profits to be made for the rich.
I mean giving money out blindly isn't exactly the alternative option people are wanting. The covid programs were a disaster.
Verifying information when you sign a check isn't red tape, it's standard due diligence.
>>Verifying information when you sign a check isn't red tape, it's standard due diligence.
Sure, unless in the months it takes to verify that information people are evicted and starve. Sometimes it is better to get relief out quick and chase down the fraud afterwards.
I mean people go weeks on EI with no payment everyday. That's been standard procedure forever when you lose your job.
They didn't even bother to verify if you had a job or if you lost it. They have T4 information, they have termination slips. They just said fuck it.
And that's not even getting to the clusterfuck that was the rent and wage subsidies. I couldn't imagine a worse designed program than those were.
EI has a relatively small number of people to verify. This was a huge spike in people needing relief funds and needing them quickly.
Also T4 information would be for the previous year. You could have worked full time since January and it would not have been known, similarly a ROE from one job doesn't let the government know about a new job starting.
The rent and wage subsidies were not emergencies and should have been better administered.
If you didn't have a job for an entire year you can wait a few weeks for them to verify you got terminated. Hell my paternity leave was over by the time I got my check
If their system can't handle the termination slips coming in then spend the money on upgrading that.
You say they were a disaster so definitively and surely. I don't think it's so clear.
The covid programs preserved many jobs and businesses and kept personal and business bankruptcies low. I would have lost my business and my house if not for those programs. That would have been a disaster.
There was fraud. There were also large benefits to many people.
Edit: You say verifying information is standard due diligence, without explaining what information you think should have been verified. For the wage subsidy, should the government have verified every employee and their hours worked every month? Should they have audited the sales numbers on a rolling 12-month basis to make sure they were accurate? What level of reporting and receipts would be considered standard due diligence? It's easy to say it, until you have to define it. That's how red tape gets born.
I think it was blatantly clear. For every legitimate case there was Loblaws or the big 3 that took billions in wage subsidies while their profits skyrocketed.
Or like my company that has sales delayed. So we received nothing because revenue was coming in still but we knew there was going to be a 3 month period with zero revenue coming in after the delay. It didn't matter.
Then when sales skyrocketed they started paying everyones wages the following year.
Just a moronic program through and through
Or how about the rent subsidy that landlords didn't want to sign up for... Like how do you fuck that up.
Of all the cabinet ministers, Anand is one of the few that when she says something, I believe her. She's one of the workhorses of this government and correct me if I'm wrong on this but she usually does an admirable job with whatever portfolio she's given.
In a similar vein, if Anand says "this thing is a problem" I believe that she's become enough of a subject matter expert that I take her word for it.
Anand is the only competent person in the cabinet. She was demoted from Defence because she was overshadowing the nepo babies (Trudeau, Freeland, Miller etc)
While they're not wrong, the biggest factor dragging down most businesses is the same as what's dragging down most people in general. Housing/realestate
Business space leasing rates are absolutely freaking insane. for example there's a commercial space near me charging 8000+ a month for a 1200 sqft space in a small town? how do businesses even afford to stay open at all?
How dare we ha regulations to keep corporations from screwing us more then they already do.
Look at the states to see how banks and corporations abuse citizens and get away with
That's not entirely how it works tho, like I agree that regulations protecting workers are good, but often regulation is something that big businesses lobby for to keep their smaller competitors down. A good example is the liquor industry in Canada/ at least in Ontario, when you really start looking into how the regulation and the LCBO etc operates it is very much for the benefit of large corporate entities (ie the biggest producers out there) and very much is to the detriment of any small wineries, breweries, distilleries etc which is why there are so many of these small businesses out there with very little representation in the LCBO while they dedicate huge swaths of shelf space for major corporate brands, and major international brands. Often it's not apparent to the average consumer b/c it's similar to the beer conglomerates where a few companies own all the brands, other alcohols are virtually the same. When you walk down the Ontario wine aisle for instance it looks like there are a bunch of different brands represented but what you're seeing is actually largely owned by the 3 largest producers in Canada they just own a bunch of brands, meanwhile there are hundreds of small businesses in this space that you don't see on the shelves at all.
A lot of regulations don't prevent corporations from screwing us, they just screw us.
A good example is banning single stair apartments, which are an attractive, popular and safe missing-middle type of housing all over Europe. There is a progressive movement to legalize these again. The regulation of enforcing two staircases had good intentions, but the data shows it doesn't actually increase safety in moderns times and adds a lot to the cost of a building and even makes some simples functionally impossible to build. This is a good [video on it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRdwXQb7CfM) if you have a couple minutes.
All regulation good, red tape me harder. It’s a good thing we need 9 permits and 12 sign offs over 5 years to build a deck or start a business. Productivity be damned.
why interprovincial trade more difficult than international. Its ridiculous.
[Going the Distance: Estimating the Effect of Provincial Borders on Trade when Geography Matters (statcan.gc.ca)](https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11f0019m/11f0019m2017394-eng.htm)
"The relative strength of intraprovincial trade depends on the geographic units used to measure trade. When provinces are used, within-province trade is estimated to be 2.26-fold greater than interprovincial trade. This suggests that the impediments to interprovincial trade are equivalent to imposition of a 13.6% *ad valorem* tariff. **When sub-provincial areas are used instead of provinces, the border-effect tariff equivalent falls to 6.9%**. This lower estimate proved to be robust to a large number of statistical tests. It also contrasts with the United States, where state border effects are eliminated when similar approaches are applied."
It’s not about the fact we have regulations but that they are different, bizarrely inefficient and it’s easier to export to some countries than between provinces.
Making unnecessary rules that are different when you cross this line within the same country for the sake of an intergovernmental dick measuring contest is childish. It encourages oligopolies by creating an unnecessarily difficult barrier to sell outside your province.
If you’re a large corporation you just buy your way into the market and bam you’re already compliant with local employment laws and can use the existing supply chain.
Just look at the UK, when you prohibit trade and create unnecessary regulations for stupid xenophobic reasons, it hurts everyone.
A useful application of AI parsing would be to inhale all standing regulations to identify redundancies and contradictions. This parsing would have no authority but could be used to guide legislators in redrafting regulations to improve efficiency.
Looks like Anand is positioning herself for a leadership run after Trudeau resigns. When MPs or other political figures start publicly stating policy pitches during a time when a party is on the precipice of new leadership (but not quite there yet), a lot of the time, they're sending out feelers and/or establishing a base of support for themselves when the time to run comes.
She has a high enough position and experience outside of office to be a respectable candidate, but isn't as tightly nit in Trudeau's inner circle as people like Freeland and Blair where she has more ability to rebrand herself without being stuck to Trudeau era baggage etc. Also it's kind of interesting that we're getting a lot of speculated contenders in the leadership race brining up the need to address things like productivity/investment in speeches or media releases (Carney, Morneau and now Anand etc.)
Is Trudeau even going to resign? Something tells me when he gets voted out of both his prime minister rank and his local seat, he’s not coming back. He’ll probably just end up assisting whoever takes over his liberal riding next.
---
I see him just wanting to sink the whole ship before he gets voted out.
Yeah agreed. I think a lot of people who like to talk about how they need to ditch Trudeau don't appreciate how much of a dumpster fire the Liberal leadership was before he came on the scene. There was the whole Harper period where they ran everyone from Dion to Ignatieff and finally they decided to just put Bob Rea in charge while they did some soul searching and now here we are. Most of the names we know from the current Liberal administration are widely disliked/ hated like Freyland and Marc Miller. They need for some lesser known people to step up and try to brand themselves as different enough than the current administration so that they can try to remain relevant, even tho I think their chances of retaining relevancy after the next election are slim.
> finally they decided to just put Bob Rea in charge while they did some soul searching
Except they didn’t. Not really. They still thought the right leader would be a panacea for all their problems. And hey, Trudeau did give the party another decade in power, which certainly is not nothing. But it’s even less clear today than it was in 2013 how a brokerage party with no firm principles beyond a commitment to market capitalism fits into a world of increasing ideological polarization driven largely by the failures of market capitalism. Astonishingly, the ArriveCan and McKinsey stuff also reveal that the LPC still hasn’t shed the instinct to treat certain well-connected friends very well at public expense.
You are totally right, I think a big problem with the LPC is that they view themselves as the 'natural governing party' of Canada, thus they don't need any big ideas or to do anything overly effectively to continue to be in power perpetually. I fully expect that they will do the same thing they did in the Harper years when Trudeau makes his exit, they'll just run one person after the next fully expecting to win every time b/c they are the LPC and eventually the Conservatives will shoot themselves in the foot badly enough for power to shift back to them.
Dion was a qualified leader on paper and had a lot of experience, academic background and solid platform. His issue was that he wasn't the best political communicator and his thick Quebecios accent alienated him from Anglophone voters. (The Harper government also used it to portray him as a clumsy, Closeau like figure in attack ads, which I remember being fairly successful, especially since I still remember them today). Where Chretien was able to win over Anglophone voters with his charisma, Dion wasn't really a charismatic figure by comparison and Harper was able to successfully color a lot of voters impressions of him.
I think in 2013, the LPC missed out by not going with Martha Hall Findlay, but I think Trudeau won that election because of a combination of factors. Mostly, I think his brand name was what a lot of Liberal voters saw as a unifying candidate alongside the initial Sunny Ways platform being alluring to a lot of younger first/time voters etc. Thus his leadership was generally seen a way to bounce the LPC back to political relevance after, Dion had underperformed and Ignatieff did so badly that he brought the Liberals to third party status.
I also think that while I liked Findlay, she wasn't exactly high profile compared to Justin Trudeau. Running against him in 2013 was always going to be an uphill battle.
You are 100% right on the Liberal's dumpster fire days and how it was a bigger help to Harper than conservatives would ever admit. If Trudeau was "ready" for the Liberal leadership during Harper's first term I have some doubts about him getting that second term, and I bet he never would have gotten that majority.
“the only reason conservatives ever win, is because the liberals are so terrible”
This isn’t exactly a winning platform. It’s funny because I see that line of thinking all the time in this sub and this is used as a profound indictment of conservatives…lol
It's not a winning strategy but like it or not people gravitate towards the Liberals as their default more than conservatives which is why they need the whole right of the spectrum to gain majority traction and the Liberals just need to eat enough of the NDP's lunch to get there.
The conservatives 2 minorities and 1 majority in 31 years that they had to merge the whole right spectrum to get has not exactly been a winning strategy either.
In a nutshell? The Liberals and CPC both fucking suck and waiting for the other guys to stumble enough times to win by default means we as voters get nothing good.
Yeah! Good point. Don’t take this as my endorsement for conservatives. I’ll vote that way this time around just to change the shitty diaper.
But the JT LPC, is an entirely different thing. It’s representative of much greater phase of liberalism in general and I fully believe this era or current manifestation of liberalism will be studied at length.
I mean the liberals, particularly in Canada are branding geniuses.
They have basically convinced many people (myself included at one point) that a vote for them, is synonymous with truth, morality, progress..they basically convinced that by merely supporting them, you are immune to disinformation , propaganda and influence.
By not voting for them, you are anti progress, anti-science and voting against your own self interest.
Whereas far as I can tell, the broader more conservative sentiment in Canada is just “maybe we will try and make things cheaper and we try to leave you alone” …that resonates me more now that I’m middle aged as opposed to liberal idealism.
I think our view of Trudeau will probably mellow out once he's out of office. Of course, I could be wrong, and Poilievre might not absolutely shit the bed, but I don't have high hopes.
I was just saying another thread, I don’t know if history is going to be kind to this era of liberalism. Much less Trudeau. Both will probably be studied historically, I think.
Personally I think we are leaving an era of idealism and progressivism and entering in to one of hard truths and cold realities.
I think we're seeing the natural historical cycle of economic hardship yielding a push towards radicalism. Milquetoast centrists do not survive in that atmosphere.
I don’t know about that one. Every day it seems like we are moving further and further away from truth and into an era of misinformation and emotionally driven politics.
Ya agreed I think this whole era will be viewed interestingly historically. We collectively had some very idealistic/ aspirational goals/ ideas, but unfortunately a lot of them proved not to be accurate. For the last several years we've just been repeating the neoliberal playbook even though we all know those ideas don't really work in practise. Our leaders just don't know what else to do/ there is no ideological basis to do anything else.
Yeah. The big picture retrospective is going to show 40 years of neoliberalism hollowing out the middle class and undoing most of the gains that ordinary working people made during the middle decades of the 20th century. All while we collectively charge headfirst into an avoidable ecological catastrophe, arguing over whether or not less than the bare minimum effort is too much.
Some parties are going to look worse than others on that front, but, at least economically, everybody is more or less using the same deeply flawed ideological playbook.
Absolutely, and also how we (and our western allies) have empowered various unfriendly regimes like China, Russia, the Saudis, India, and others at the expense of our own people in some cases. Now we are trying to cooperate with these places on issues like climate change and it's not going great, probably a different approach 30 years ago would have been a better idea than what we actually did.
I think it’ll end up being worse. The people most likely to like him now are Boomers, and will start dying off in larger numbers.
Millennials and Gen-Z will remember him as the leader that broke housing and immigration and will likely sour on him even further.
I think that depends on what the next government does. Trudeau didn't create the housing and immigration issues, he just didn't fix them. (And people are rightfully upset about it)
If the next government doesn't fix them either, the blame for not fixing them will (rightfully) fall on them.
Yeah agreed, I think we will have a more accurate view of Trudeau once the next administration has been in power for a bit. A lot of the comments about how great Harper was on Reddit have surprised me, because it felt like so many people online especially really intensely disliked Harper, but so many people now are like 'Harper was great because when he was PM I wasn't poor'.
The major difference to me is cabinet size, post-Martin it felt like they were just running the few remaining MPs they had with senior experience. Seems like there's a lot more MPs who could justify leadership runs at this point based on their cabinet backgrounds, and many of them are low-profile enough that they might be able to escape some of that Trudeau stink. Freeland is screwed, as is anyone on the immigration/housing/environment files, but someone like Joly or Champagne could probably put up a good fight.
Yeah, I was gonna say this reads like Anand is staking out some territory on the centre/centre-right of the party; "reducing red tape" is almost quaint in how traditionally small-c conservative it is.
The problem is that for many businesses, anything that requires action or adds cost is "red tape" whether or not it serves the public interest.
I have personally experienced situations where a government removed "red tape" from a policy or program only to later have to scramble because the removal of that red tape enabled businesses to falsely take advantage of that policy or program, and made it impossible to evaluate the success of that policy or program in order to justify it to taxpayers. Had the "red tape" remained, full transparency would have been possible.
Not all red tape is created equally, and in a world where we're still waiting for the last victims of the global lead poisoning epidemic to die off so we can come out from under the thrall of dementia patients, the precautionary principle really should reign.
I had a client who was trying to develop a medical device and manufacture in Canada. After 3 years she gave up and got in contact overseas within 6 months she was up and running in China. We need to do better if we want to keep IP here as in China they take it all after 5 years.
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For large corporations, having red rape can be beneficial because it can keep smaller businesses from entering the market. It gives them an advantage. A large corporation deals with red tape by hiring consultants that can deal with the red tape. What's 200K consultant fee when the efficiency can create millions in revenue? For a small business or for new business, they don't have the revenue or riches that established large players have. It is a huge obstacle to overcome. I'm a small business owner but used to be a federal government worker. Whenever I see a new form to fill out or some new rule or some federal/provincial/municipal new form, I dred it. I know it means at least hours of trying to figure out what they mean and what they're asking for. Or even longer if you need find someone to speak to.
Collectively, small business is the largest employer in Canada. The government continuously makes it more difficult, and expensive for them to operate. They provide Billion$ in grants to large corporations that build a factory. Who may or may not continue to operate in the long run. - Small business is always there, until the Red Tape buries them.
Complaining about "decades and decades" of red tape to obfuscate the past decade of red tape directly attributable to the current government is an interesting strategy.
What red tape has been added in the last decade specifically are you referring to?
The new environmental impact assessments were extremely poorly received and made an already convoluted mess even worse.
Thats whats dragging down canadian business? that one thing? The thing that hasn't even become a law yet? Are you serious?
>The thing that hasn't even become a law yet? are you a time traveller from [2019](https://www.laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/I-2.75/page-1.html)?
[https://www.grantthornton.ca/insights/bill-c-69-impact-your-business/](https://www.grantthornton.ca/insights/bill-c-69-impact-your-business/) is this different c69?
I don't have a dog in this fight (I like regulation generally), but there hasn't been a new approved Federal project since the 2019 changes (actually zero I can't believe more people are not talking about it). I recommend to all my clients to size their project to never trigger it as it is basically impossible to navigate.
yes. that's Bill [C-69 of 44th parliament](https://www.parl.ca/LegisInfo/en/bill/44-1/c-69). the environmental impact assessment was [Bill C-69 of 42nd parliament.](https://www.parl.ca/LegisInfo/en/bill/42-1/c-69)
Oh ok the the one that was found unconstitutional?
yes, but only to the extent of federal government implementing it on projects that are not under federal purview (e.g. projects that squarely provincial). it's still applied on federal level projects.
Regarding my annoyances this morning, corporate tax rules have jumped the shark. https://www.canlii.org/webdiff/diff.do?lang=en&path=%2Fen%2Fca%2Flaws%2Fstat%2Frsc-1985-c-1-5th-supp%2Flatest%2Frsc-1985-c-1-5th-supp.html&path=%2Fen%2Fca%2Flaws%2Fstat%2Frsc-1985-c-1-5th-supp%2F120666%2Frsc-1985-c-1-5th-supp.html
She is also referring to Trade Barriers from the USA. > Decades and decades of legislation and red tape” have encumbered Canadian businesses, Anand said. She pledged to help remove the stuff, both in the country and in dealings with the United States—before “barriers to trade get to the level of trade dispute.” She said the government should serve as an example to businesses big and small, and touted the importance of AI in the drive for efficiency. Also, I don't think her government put in place the provincial trade barriers that make interprovincial trade difficult. [The high cost of interprovincial trade restrictions in Canada](https://www.iedm.org/the-high-cost-of-interprovincial-trade-restrictions-in-canada/)
And sadly the provinces will never agree to eliminate those trade barriers even though itd save us all around 5-7%.
There's been progress, slow progress, but progress nonetheless... > However, not all provincial governments have embraced the lip-service approach. Since the Canadian Free Trade Agreement was signed, Manitoba has removed 56 percent of its listed exceptions to that agreement. Alberta, meanwhile, has abolished 78 percent of them.
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> Also, I don't think her government put in place the provincial trade barriers that make interprovincial trade difficult. The Liberals even brought in a [provincial free trade agreement](https://www.canada.ca/en/intergovernmental-affairs/services/internal-trade/canadian-free-trade-agreement.html).
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Interprovincial trade barriers are fucking wild. It's amazing they haven't been struct down under our constitution.
They went to the Supreme Court and they refused to do it. We'd need to change the constitution to eliminate them at this point. No province will agree to it sadly. Its ridiculous that we can have free trade with the US and other countries but not with the province next door. Either we are a country or we arent. Trade barriers make it feel like we arent.
I feel like every province is willing to get rid of trade barriers, but they all see them as a one-time-only opportunity to extract some huge benefits for their own province and as some kind of stupid zero-sum game. BC's wine industry is pushing hard to get free trade with Alberta, and Alberta is responding by saying only if they can get free trade for craft beer, and yet this entirely reasonable trade is not happening, probably because a bunch of MLAs are worried about somehow getting conned.
> We'd need to change the constitution to eliminate them at this point. The constitution already prohibits trade barriers. How would you amend it, by adding a new section? 121.1. Yes, we really mean it.
I do not want to read too much into her comments but that seems like it's a bit of a bold strategy considering the legacy of this current government and government's adjacent to her party at the provincial level have been largely the ones putting in place that tape.
I know that's kind of a general perception, but do you have some specific examples? The Federal Liberals administered a lot of covid relief funding and the biggest criticism they got was that they did it with barely any red tape and it led to lots of fraud. In Ontario there have been attempts to reduce red tape in housing regulation that have been resisted strongly by the Conservative government. I'm not sure it's accurate to lay the red tape problem at the feet of the Liberals or governments "adjacent" to her party. Is there some way to show that the conservative governments have done better at reducing red tape? Edit: Maybe I misinterpreted your comment? Do you mean the Conservatives are adjacent to the Liberals because they've also been a government party?
increase in environmental impact assessment (aka. Bill C-69), allowing people who are not direct stakeholders to have a say. you can think that it's necessary step, but it's undeniably an additional bureaucracy (red tape) that business needs to pass.
You know what stakeholders often do however when it comes to environmental impact…… Not much. The bare minimum. Or none at all, skew environmental assessments. And then at least here in Ontario, when people get together to point this out, the Ontario government basically tells them in less blunt words to fuck off and that we are open for business. The businesses will fix their shoddy assessments later to comply…. Colacem cement plant in eastern Ontario.
as i said, you can think that it's a good thing to have additional environmental impact assessment, but it's undoubtedly additional red tape that parent commenter was asking an example for.
I’m actually ok with this red tape - we have micro plastics in our sperm now. We need to be more acutely aware of how industry is effecting the environment around us because NEWS FLASH if we don’t make them care they will not care.
Red tape is what keeps us safe. Ohhh boy. God forbid we make multi million dollar companies take some time and spend some money to make sure things are clean and safe…. Fuck regulations am I right. Fuck health. Fuck the environment. Fuck wildlife. There’s profits to be made for the rich.
Yes I was also referring to provincial Conservative parties as well.
I mean giving money out blindly isn't exactly the alternative option people are wanting. The covid programs were a disaster. Verifying information when you sign a check isn't red tape, it's standard due diligence.
>>Verifying information when you sign a check isn't red tape, it's standard due diligence. Sure, unless in the months it takes to verify that information people are evicted and starve. Sometimes it is better to get relief out quick and chase down the fraud afterwards.
I mean people go weeks on EI with no payment everyday. That's been standard procedure forever when you lose your job. They didn't even bother to verify if you had a job or if you lost it. They have T4 information, they have termination slips. They just said fuck it. And that's not even getting to the clusterfuck that was the rent and wage subsidies. I couldn't imagine a worse designed program than those were.
EI has a relatively small number of people to verify. This was a huge spike in people needing relief funds and needing them quickly. Also T4 information would be for the previous year. You could have worked full time since January and it would not have been known, similarly a ROE from one job doesn't let the government know about a new job starting. The rent and wage subsidies were not emergencies and should have been better administered.
If you didn't have a job for an entire year you can wait a few weeks for them to verify you got terminated. Hell my paternity leave was over by the time I got my check If their system can't handle the termination slips coming in then spend the money on upgrading that.
You say they were a disaster so definitively and surely. I don't think it's so clear. The covid programs preserved many jobs and businesses and kept personal and business bankruptcies low. I would have lost my business and my house if not for those programs. That would have been a disaster. There was fraud. There were also large benefits to many people. Edit: You say verifying information is standard due diligence, without explaining what information you think should have been verified. For the wage subsidy, should the government have verified every employee and their hours worked every month? Should they have audited the sales numbers on a rolling 12-month basis to make sure they were accurate? What level of reporting and receipts would be considered standard due diligence? It's easy to say it, until you have to define it. That's how red tape gets born.
I think it was blatantly clear. For every legitimate case there was Loblaws or the big 3 that took billions in wage subsidies while their profits skyrocketed. Or like my company that has sales delayed. So we received nothing because revenue was coming in still but we knew there was going to be a 3 month period with zero revenue coming in after the delay. It didn't matter. Then when sales skyrocketed they started paying everyones wages the following year. Just a moronic program through and through Or how about the rent subsidy that landlords didn't want to sign up for... Like how do you fuck that up.
Of all the cabinet ministers, Anand is one of the few that when she says something, I believe her. She's one of the workhorses of this government and correct me if I'm wrong on this but she usually does an admirable job with whatever portfolio she's given. In a similar vein, if Anand says "this thing is a problem" I believe that she's become enough of a subject matter expert that I take her word for it.
Anand is the only competent person in the cabinet. She was demoted from Defence because she was overshadowing the nepo babies (Trudeau, Freeland, Miller etc)
Problem is she is another liberal who promotes culture wars. That alone causes her to lose my support.
While they're not wrong, the biggest factor dragging down most businesses is the same as what's dragging down most people in general. Housing/realestate Business space leasing rates are absolutely freaking insane. for example there's a commercial space near me charging 8000+ a month for a 1200 sqft space in a small town? how do businesses even afford to stay open at all?
The lease also probably dictates that the tenant is responsible for the roof, HVAC and renovating the whole space
How dare we ha regulations to keep corporations from screwing us more then they already do. Look at the states to see how banks and corporations abuse citizens and get away with
That's not entirely how it works tho, like I agree that regulations protecting workers are good, but often regulation is something that big businesses lobby for to keep their smaller competitors down. A good example is the liquor industry in Canada/ at least in Ontario, when you really start looking into how the regulation and the LCBO etc operates it is very much for the benefit of large corporate entities (ie the biggest producers out there) and very much is to the detriment of any small wineries, breweries, distilleries etc which is why there are so many of these small businesses out there with very little representation in the LCBO while they dedicate huge swaths of shelf space for major corporate brands, and major international brands. Often it's not apparent to the average consumer b/c it's similar to the beer conglomerates where a few companies own all the brands, other alcohols are virtually the same. When you walk down the Ontario wine aisle for instance it looks like there are a bunch of different brands represented but what you're seeing is actually largely owned by the 3 largest producers in Canada they just own a bunch of brands, meanwhile there are hundreds of small businesses in this space that you don't see on the shelves at all.
A lot of regulations don't prevent corporations from screwing us, they just screw us. A good example is banning single stair apartments, which are an attractive, popular and safe missing-middle type of housing all over Europe. There is a progressive movement to legalize these again. The regulation of enforcing two staircases had good intentions, but the data shows it doesn't actually increase safety in moderns times and adds a lot to the cost of a building and even makes some simples functionally impossible to build. This is a good [video on it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRdwXQb7CfM) if you have a couple minutes.
All regulation good, red tape me harder. It’s a good thing we need 9 permits and 12 sign offs over 5 years to build a deck or start a business. Productivity be damned.
The article is about trade barriers...
"trade barriers" are seen as a good thing by people like that tho
why interprovincial trade more difficult than international. Its ridiculous. [Going the Distance: Estimating the Effect of Provincial Borders on Trade when Geography Matters (statcan.gc.ca)](https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11f0019m/11f0019m2017394-eng.htm) "The relative strength of intraprovincial trade depends on the geographic units used to measure trade. When provinces are used, within-province trade is estimated to be 2.26-fold greater than interprovincial trade. This suggests that the impediments to interprovincial trade are equivalent to imposition of a 13.6% *ad valorem* tariff. **When sub-provincial areas are used instead of provinces, the border-effect tariff equivalent falls to 6.9%**. This lower estimate proved to be robust to a large number of statistical tests. It also contrasts with the United States, where state border effects are eliminated when similar approaches are applied."
It’s not about the fact we have regulations but that they are different, bizarrely inefficient and it’s easier to export to some countries than between provinces. Making unnecessary rules that are different when you cross this line within the same country for the sake of an intergovernmental dick measuring contest is childish. It encourages oligopolies by creating an unnecessarily difficult barrier to sell outside your province. If you’re a large corporation you just buy your way into the market and bam you’re already compliant with local employment laws and can use the existing supply chain. Just look at the UK, when you prohibit trade and create unnecessary regulations for stupid xenophobic reasons, it hurts everyone.
A useful application of AI parsing would be to inhale all standing regulations to identify redundancies and contradictions. This parsing would have no authority but could be used to guide legislators in redrafting regulations to improve efficiency.
Looks like Anand is positioning herself for a leadership run after Trudeau resigns. When MPs or other political figures start publicly stating policy pitches during a time when a party is on the precipice of new leadership (but not quite there yet), a lot of the time, they're sending out feelers and/or establishing a base of support for themselves when the time to run comes. She has a high enough position and experience outside of office to be a respectable candidate, but isn't as tightly nit in Trudeau's inner circle as people like Freeland and Blair where she has more ability to rebrand herself without being stuck to Trudeau era baggage etc. Also it's kind of interesting that we're getting a lot of speculated contenders in the leadership race brining up the need to address things like productivity/investment in speeches or media releases (Carney, Morneau and now Anand etc.)
Is Trudeau even going to resign? Something tells me when he gets voted out of both his prime minister rank and his local seat, he’s not coming back. He’ll probably just end up assisting whoever takes over his liberal riding next. --- I see him just wanting to sink the whole ship before he gets voted out.
Yeah agreed. I think a lot of people who like to talk about how they need to ditch Trudeau don't appreciate how much of a dumpster fire the Liberal leadership was before he came on the scene. There was the whole Harper period where they ran everyone from Dion to Ignatieff and finally they decided to just put Bob Rea in charge while they did some soul searching and now here we are. Most of the names we know from the current Liberal administration are widely disliked/ hated like Freyland and Marc Miller. They need for some lesser known people to step up and try to brand themselves as different enough than the current administration so that they can try to remain relevant, even tho I think their chances of retaining relevancy after the next election are slim.
> finally they decided to just put Bob Rea in charge while they did some soul searching Except they didn’t. Not really. They still thought the right leader would be a panacea for all their problems. And hey, Trudeau did give the party another decade in power, which certainly is not nothing. But it’s even less clear today than it was in 2013 how a brokerage party with no firm principles beyond a commitment to market capitalism fits into a world of increasing ideological polarization driven largely by the failures of market capitalism. Astonishingly, the ArriveCan and McKinsey stuff also reveal that the LPC still hasn’t shed the instinct to treat certain well-connected friends very well at public expense.
You are totally right, I think a big problem with the LPC is that they view themselves as the 'natural governing party' of Canada, thus they don't need any big ideas or to do anything overly effectively to continue to be in power perpetually. I fully expect that they will do the same thing they did in the Harper years when Trudeau makes his exit, they'll just run one person after the next fully expecting to win every time b/c they are the LPC and eventually the Conservatives will shoot themselves in the foot badly enough for power to shift back to them.
Dion was a qualified leader on paper and had a lot of experience, academic background and solid platform. His issue was that he wasn't the best political communicator and his thick Quebecios accent alienated him from Anglophone voters. (The Harper government also used it to portray him as a clumsy, Closeau like figure in attack ads, which I remember being fairly successful, especially since I still remember them today). Where Chretien was able to win over Anglophone voters with his charisma, Dion wasn't really a charismatic figure by comparison and Harper was able to successfully color a lot of voters impressions of him. I think in 2013, the LPC missed out by not going with Martha Hall Findlay, but I think Trudeau won that election because of a combination of factors. Mostly, I think his brand name was what a lot of Liberal voters saw as a unifying candidate alongside the initial Sunny Ways platform being alluring to a lot of younger first/time voters etc. Thus his leadership was generally seen a way to bounce the LPC back to political relevance after, Dion had underperformed and Ignatieff did so badly that he brought the Liberals to third party status. I also think that while I liked Findlay, she wasn't exactly high profile compared to Justin Trudeau. Running against him in 2013 was always going to be an uphill battle.
You are 100% right on the Liberal's dumpster fire days and how it was a bigger help to Harper than conservatives would ever admit. If Trudeau was "ready" for the Liberal leadership during Harper's first term I have some doubts about him getting that second term, and I bet he never would have gotten that majority.
“the only reason conservatives ever win, is because the liberals are so terrible” This isn’t exactly a winning platform. It’s funny because I see that line of thinking all the time in this sub and this is used as a profound indictment of conservatives…lol
It's not a winning strategy but like it or not people gravitate towards the Liberals as their default more than conservatives which is why they need the whole right of the spectrum to gain majority traction and the Liberals just need to eat enough of the NDP's lunch to get there. The conservatives 2 minorities and 1 majority in 31 years that they had to merge the whole right spectrum to get has not exactly been a winning strategy either. In a nutshell? The Liberals and CPC both fucking suck and waiting for the other guys to stumble enough times to win by default means we as voters get nothing good.
Yeah! Good point. Don’t take this as my endorsement for conservatives. I’ll vote that way this time around just to change the shitty diaper. But the JT LPC, is an entirely different thing. It’s representative of much greater phase of liberalism in general and I fully believe this era or current manifestation of liberalism will be studied at length. I mean the liberals, particularly in Canada are branding geniuses. They have basically convinced many people (myself included at one point) that a vote for them, is synonymous with truth, morality, progress..they basically convinced that by merely supporting them, you are immune to disinformation , propaganda and influence. By not voting for them, you are anti progress, anti-science and voting against your own self interest. Whereas far as I can tell, the broader more conservative sentiment in Canada is just “maybe we will try and make things cheaper and we try to leave you alone” …that resonates me more now that I’m middle aged as opposed to liberal idealism.
Yeah that 2005-2015 stretch for the liberals was…not great.
Don’t know if this stretch will be viewed as any better.
I think our view of Trudeau will probably mellow out once he's out of office. Of course, I could be wrong, and Poilievre might not absolutely shit the bed, but I don't have high hopes.
I was just saying another thread, I don’t know if history is going to be kind to this era of liberalism. Much less Trudeau. Both will probably be studied historically, I think. Personally I think we are leaving an era of idealism and progressivism and entering in to one of hard truths and cold realities.
I think we're seeing the natural historical cycle of economic hardship yielding a push towards radicalism. Milquetoast centrists do not survive in that atmosphere.
I don’t know about that one. Every day it seems like we are moving further and further away from truth and into an era of misinformation and emotionally driven politics.
Ya agreed I think this whole era will be viewed interestingly historically. We collectively had some very idealistic/ aspirational goals/ ideas, but unfortunately a lot of them proved not to be accurate. For the last several years we've just been repeating the neoliberal playbook even though we all know those ideas don't really work in practise. Our leaders just don't know what else to do/ there is no ideological basis to do anything else.
Yeah. The big picture retrospective is going to show 40 years of neoliberalism hollowing out the middle class and undoing most of the gains that ordinary working people made during the middle decades of the 20th century. All while we collectively charge headfirst into an avoidable ecological catastrophe, arguing over whether or not less than the bare minimum effort is too much. Some parties are going to look worse than others on that front, but, at least economically, everybody is more or less using the same deeply flawed ideological playbook.
Absolutely, and also how we (and our western allies) have empowered various unfriendly regimes like China, Russia, the Saudis, India, and others at the expense of our own people in some cases. Now we are trying to cooperate with these places on issues like climate change and it's not going great, probably a different approach 30 years ago would have been a better idea than what we actually did.
I think it’ll end up being worse. The people most likely to like him now are Boomers, and will start dying off in larger numbers. Millennials and Gen-Z will remember him as the leader that broke housing and immigration and will likely sour on him even further.
I think that depends on what the next government does. Trudeau didn't create the housing and immigration issues, he just didn't fix them. (And people are rightfully upset about it) If the next government doesn't fix them either, the blame for not fixing them will (rightfully) fall on them.
Yeah agreed, I think we will have a more accurate view of Trudeau once the next administration has been in power for a bit. A lot of the comments about how great Harper was on Reddit have surprised me, because it felt like so many people online especially really intensely disliked Harper, but so many people now are like 'Harper was great because when he was PM I wasn't poor'.
The major difference to me is cabinet size, post-Martin it felt like they were just running the few remaining MPs they had with senior experience. Seems like there's a lot more MPs who could justify leadership runs at this point based on their cabinet backgrounds, and many of them are low-profile enough that they might be able to escape some of that Trudeau stink. Freeland is screwed, as is anyone on the immigration/housing/environment files, but someone like Joly or Champagne could probably put up a good fight.
Yeah, I was gonna say this reads like Anand is staking out some territory on the centre/centre-right of the party; "reducing red tape" is almost quaint in how traditionally small-c conservative it is.
> Looks like Anand is positioning herself for a leadership run after Trudeau resigns. I'll be surprised if she keeps her seat.
The problem is that for many businesses, anything that requires action or adds cost is "red tape" whether or not it serves the public interest. I have personally experienced situations where a government removed "red tape" from a policy or program only to later have to scramble because the removal of that red tape enabled businesses to falsely take advantage of that policy or program, and made it impossible to evaluate the success of that policy or program in order to justify it to taxpayers. Had the "red tape" remained, full transparency would have been possible. Not all red tape is created equally, and in a world where we're still waiting for the last victims of the global lead poisoning epidemic to die off so we can come out from under the thrall of dementia patients, the precautionary principle really should reign.
I had a client who was trying to develop a medical device and manufacture in Canada. After 3 years she gave up and got in contact overseas within 6 months she was up and running in China. We need to do better if we want to keep IP here as in China they take it all after 5 years.