Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today I will be speaking about an all-too-familiar frustration for individuals and businesses in our territory: red tape. Red tape refers to those non-essential procedures — forms, licences and regulations — that add to the cost of dealing with government. To be clear, red tape does not refer to regulations that are effective and necessary for the protection of public health, safety, the environment and consumers. Those types of regulations are important and essential for good government.
The regulations we need to do away with are those that are obsolete, redundant and confusing and those that hurt our economic competitiveness or simply waste taxpayers’ time and money.
Several provinces, including British Columbia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Quebec, have red tape–reduction initiatives underway. In 2001 the British Columbia government committed to reducing the unnecessary red tape and regulations by one-third within three years. The government Ministers are now required to maintain a zero per cent increase to regulatory requirements from their June 2004 baselines, and they continue to identify further reductions and reform opportunities. In addition to reducing the number of regulations, the British Columbia government has introduced strict criteria to ensure that new and remaining regulations are as efficient and as effective as possible.
Mr. Speaker, I believe it’s time for the GNWT to look at its own red tape–reduction initiative, perhaps dusting off some of the work started on regulatory reform during the 13th Assembly. This is
a project that would fit well with the mandate of the Refocusing Government Strategic Initiative Committee led by Minister Miltenberger, which he spoke about yesterday. I’ll be encouraging the committee to consider this type of initiative to make government as effective and efficient as possible.