Industry Committee on Feb. 5th, 2019

[Corinne Pohlmann]

The first thought that comes into my mind is to allow business owners to actually email CRA; it's as simple as that. There are things like that. You still have to have a fax machine to contact the CRA; it's pretty antiquated. It's even simple things that would allow businesses to be able to communicate, and then if you're doing electronic communication, you don't have to wait 10 business days to get a response. These are the types of processes that still exist within government and that are stuck in the eighties and nineties.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

I'd like you to give just one thought. Would it be easier to do a test drive with one particular department, so to speak, as the best practice, or do an across the board kind of thing, with a minimum number of things to be done? I don't know if that has been thought of, whether it's a pilot project...especially in the digital age.

I'll also let you speak, Mr. Greer.

[Corinne Pohlmann]

I was going to say that I think CRA is probably the best department. To be fair, they are trying new things. They've created My Business Account, an online portal for businesses to use. We're pushing them more and more to use that because it allows businesses to communicate electronically with government through that means.

I only touch on them because they have the biggest impact across.... They are the department, and to be fair, they are trying new things. We try to work with encourage them. They've tried apps as well, those kinds of thing, which haven't really worked. But I think continuing to be innovative in that regard is an important piece of how government can better service small business owners. They work on their smart phones now; they don't work at computer desks anymore.

[Ryan Greer]

I would just add that it's perplexing to so many companies why, when they're providing information to the government, they need to have 12 different logins for 12 different websites for different departments, with different passwords for each one. Some of those remember who you are when you sign in; with other ones, you need to fill in the same information every single time. There's no tombstone data.

I know there are a lot of tricky aspects to the federal government's own ability to share information within itself, but it's very challenging when you're dealing with the government. In fact, you're actually just dealing with dozens of different entities, all of whom communicate with you and interact with you in different ways, which causes a lot of headaches.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

I would actually like to ask a question here.

On page 7, you ask which federal government regulations are most burdensome to a business. On the fourth line down, it's the record of employment, which I know that you do online; you don't have to do them by hand anymore.

How do you see that? Do you see that as reducing the burden? They have to get done in some way or another. Is that an innovation that you see has happened?

[Corinne Pohlmann]

Yes it is, except to actually get into the system you used to have to go through quite a lengthy process. You had to actually get the password to get into the system, so there was that hurdle to get over. They've recently changed that to make it a little easier so they can email you a password to go through. It's definitely an improvement, because it's now electronic and there's no paper, but the process is still the same. There's still the question of why we are producing eight million of these per year when only about one million are actually needed. Not everybody who gets an ROE is going to go on employment insurance, which is ultimately what it's for. There are all kinds of things. I think it's one of those areas that we need to rethink. Is this process still the best process for what we need to do? We have lots of questions around that as well. We're trying to work with ESDC to make some adjustments there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

I do know there was the push to get one code that would get you into all of the services. As a small business owner myself, I've felt the frustration of that. Being able to access those services online has certainly made things a lot easier if you have the right code.

Thank you.

We only have some questions left on this side, so we're going to start with Mr. Longfield.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

How much time do I have?

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

You have seven minutes.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Great. Thanks. I'll be sharing my time with Mr. Sheehan, as well.

Thanks for your testimony. It's good to see the CFIB and Canadian Chamber of Commerce working on the same issue and to see a lot of commonality between the two organizations. Sometimes that isn't the case, as I know from having worked in the network as much I have. It's good to see you working together on this.

I'm really interested in the process piece. The examples you've just given us seem like examples that would be very good in a report going back to the CRA asking for tombstone data. For me, the worst part of running a business was the paperwork. The worst part of being an MP is the paperwork. I don't like paperwork, and I'm not good at paperwork. That's probably why I don't like it.

To make it simple for business to implement ideas like that, maybe we should have a testing ground because we don't want to do something that's going to make things worse. Is having some kind of a sandbox, or some kind of a test group to run new ideas past, something that your organizations have advocated for or considered, be a good idea?

[Ryan Greer]

Yes, we've long pitched that you need to try new things, whether they're risk-based, outcome-based, regulatory sandboxes or iterative processes. Those are important to try to find out what works. Departments try sometimes to do that, but they're incredibly risk-averse. Why risk a knock on the door from the Auditor General when you can just layer on an extra two or three layers of red tape for the end user?

A lot of times, those attempts aren't successful, with the federal government actually itself assuming risk in trying something new that perhaps it may need to adjust. It may not get the outcome it hoped for. It may need to narrow its focus on the bad actors. Part of that requires governments themselves to change some of their thinking in how they will accept the risk of actually trying something new that isn't just a different approach to layering on differing kinds of burdens.

[Corinne Pohlmann]

I'll just add that pilot projects in the federal government sometimes tend to go on and on, and that's the other thing. You need to do it for a two- or three-year period, and assess it and make a determination to continue it or cut it off. Unfortunately, that often doesn't happen in government, but we're big promoters of trying those things.

I'll give an example of another department. The Atlantic immigration pilot project, I think, has been successful in cutting the red tape for businesses bringing in people from other countries. That kind of innovation needs to be encouraged, and we try to support those types of initiatives whenever we can.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

That was brought forward by the innovative member of Parliament Alaina Lockhart, and now we're looking at doing that in northern Canada.

[Corinne Pohlmann]

Exactly, the rural and northern immigration pilot.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Exactly.

So, if we look at guiding principles.... The Conservative members here have mentioned pricing pollution. They use different words than we do, but we're looking at how to reduce the impact of pollution. We need regulations around that. There's social impact, as well, when we're consulting on pipelines. We're working out our relationship with indigenous people, including the non-elected indigenous people who were missed in the first round of consultation.

The consultative process, making sure that we have the right social and environmental impacts, as well as economic impacts, has to be part of regulations. We can't avoid those other two. We'd like to focus on profit all of the time, but really, we have to look at the others as well.

[Laura Jones]

I think that's very true, but I think that one of the challenges in these processes is time, and for any business—and I think this is a big gap between government and business—time is money. So, it's the uncertainty. I don't think the optimal answer to every project is “yes”, but it's not “no” either. Certainly, the amount of time it takes could be reduced, while still maintaining some of the important consultation pieces that you're talking about.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Right. Thank you. I've taken up Mr. Sheehan's time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

You have three minutes.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Oh, is that okay?

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Yes. You had seven, not five.

[Lloyd Longfield, Liberal, Guelph, ON]

Oh, yes, that's right.

Thank you both.

[Terry Sheehan, Liberal, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

My question is for Ryan.

Thanks again to the chamber for presenting.

With regard to the fall economic statement—the mini-budget, if you will—the chamber's response was that it was pleased, for lack of a better term, that much of what was in its report that you referenced, “Death by 130,000 Cuts”, was included.

Could you please explain to the committee which of those recommendations you thought were the most important, or could you expand on the recommendations themselves in the fall economic statement?

[Ryan Greer]

First, I think Minister Brison and Treasury Board deserve a tremendous amount of credit for what was in the fall economic statement and their work to get that in there. Now it all comes down to implementation. These are promises, and now we'll see how these are fulfilled. We think some of these could be real game changers.

I mentioned in my remarks that I think the biggest one is giving economic growth and competitiveness mandates to all regulators. Every day our members are contending with regulators who, no matter what evidence or cost they're presented with by companies or members, will say, “Our job isn't to do that. Our job is only focused on this.” They're not trying to achieve both that protection and prosperity in their mandate. If that commitment is implemented in a way that actually adjusts proportionality, adjusts some of the ways that regulators think, and helps all regulators endeavour to promote economic growth, then that could be the biggest game changer.

That was inspired by us asking for that. The department's thinking was that the U.K. implemented something similar—a growth duty—for the same reasons that we were asking for this: that too many regulators were not being proportionate and were not considering the business impacts in their activity.

The flip side of that is if a lot of departments and regulators see it as a symbolic commitment. If it's legislated and they say they already do a cost-benefit analysis that determines why they take a certain approach, and that this won't change the way they do business, then we may not get much out of it. We think that's big, along with the CFIB's talking about a business-facing group that can propose simplifications.

I mentioned in my remarks that implementation here is key. The Danish Business Authority uses the “comply or explain” principle, which we really like. Too often governments will commission expert reports or committee reports, and then they cherry-pick the things that most closely align with their existing priorities. “Comply or explain” means either you do it, or you tell us publicly why you won't. We like that. We think those are two of the biggest....

I know Minister Brison was particularly fond of an annual modernization bill. That can be useful. Again, it depends on what processes feed into that, how that will interact with the one-for-one, whether departments will be incentivized to hold back regulations from that so they can account for their one-for-one, or how they will be reconciled. There are enough measures in there that could be real difference makers, if implemented correctly. For us now, it's about seeing how Treasury Board and regulators themselves will implement those commitments.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

We have Mr. Baylis and then Ms. Caesar-Chavannes.