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CFIB gives B.C.'s regulations top marks

Small business's red tape is looking more pinkish this past year in B.C. The B.C.

Small business's red tape is looking more pinkish this past year in B.C.

The B.C. government got a Grade A report card from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) last week in a national study of provincial regulations, the highest mark in Canada.

The announcement was made at Topaz Bead Gallery, one of Prince George's downtown independent small businesses. Proprietor Kate Roxburgh said she has been an active CFIB member and a victim of red tape in the past, as most small business operators have been.

"One of the things you are abundantly aware of, as a small business person, is you are it: the bathroom cleaner, the floor sweeper, the shelf stocker, the marketer, the public face, the bill-payer. I have to figure out the credit card service, the insurance, the licensing... You are a one-man band. I don't have time to bury my face in pages and pages of paperwork," she said.

Roxburgh has some suggestions, based on her own experiences, to trim further red tape.

"I want to do everything online. Everything," she said. "Filing my PST [Provincial Sales Tax] documentation is now really easy because of that. Even the federal stuff - and that's a whole other story - is better when they have it online. I am like almost every other small business person: I run my business during the day and do the administrative work at night, when government offices are closed, from my home computer. Online, please."

Having easy access to commonly required business information, too, would be a big help to businesses.

"If you could somehow simplify the triple-net situation, that would be huge," Roxburgh said, referring to a form of commercial lease preferred by some landlords that rolls many maintenance costs onto a schedule some tenants find financially complex, unresponsive to their business practices when sharing with other commercial tenants and cost-uncontrollable. "It is hard to even talk about, it is so confusing. Fix the triple-net mysteries facing a small business person, and that would take a lot of stress off of many business people."

Roxburgh was the first to speak up that not enough work has been done to ease the bureaucratic stresses of the entrepreneur, but she appreciated the efforts made in B.C.

"The B.C. government is one of the only governments in Canada willing to make red tape easier to fight by measuring regulatory requirements, reporting the measures publicly and setting a one-in-one-out target," said CFIB's executive vice-president Laura Jones. "The province continues to set the gold standard for accountability and push for new ways to improve on its red tape reduction record. British Columbia deserves its top A-grade on our report card."