CFIB gives Sask. 'B' grade on its red tape report card

The Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) has given Saskatchewan a “B” grade on its 13th annual red tape report card.

In business terms, red tape is an idiom referring to regulations or conformity to rules or standards that are considered excessive or redundant.

Saskatchewan received the grade as part of Red Tape Awareness Week.

Brianna Solberg from the CFIB said the report card was divided into three categories regulatory accountability, regulatory burden and political priority.

“In terms of regulatory accountability Saskatchewan earns a ‘B’ in this category, which is a good grade,” Solberg said in an interview with CTV Morning Live.

Solberg said that grade essentially means Saskatchewan is reporting its regulatory count and are clearly letting people know what sort of rules need to be followed.

“They lose marks in this category though because they don’t have those rules and policies downloadable in a simple data format,” she said.

Solberg said the regulatory burden category looked at how open the government is to helping businesses navigate the challenges that they could face.

“[It also looked at] how burdensome are the rules and regulations, how unnecessary and complicated are they,” Solberg said.

“The last category we go into political priority and that’s a new indicator for us this year.”

Solberg said the political priority category looked to see if members of government including the premier are making red tape reduction a priority and whether or not it’s part of their mandate.

“When we talk about red tape we are not talking about removing all rules and regulations by any means,” Solberg said. “We understand there is a need for regulations, we’re not talking about getting rid of hard hats on construction sites.”

• Download the CTV News app to get local alerts sent to your device

Solberg said they are referring to overly burdensome outdated and complicated processes that businesses must follow.

We’re looking to see governments identify those and work to reduce them so that more business owners can focus on running their business,” Solberg said.

The CFIB is Canada’s largest association of small and medium sized businesses. Over 97,000 businesses from across the country are members.