I’m pleased to be able to rise in the chamber today and speak to the Less Red Tape, Stronger Economy Act. I wish to thank the Minister of Red Tape Reduction for his participation this morning and for the words that he shared with regard to this package and to his commitment and the entire commitment of the team at the Ministry of Red Tape Reduction to unleashing opportunity for the people of this province and ensuring that our government is one that follows through on its commitments, including the commitment to make it easier to access services, to cut the amount of time that people have to spend in terms of dealing with onerous regulations or duplicative processes, and to also maintain protections for workers, for health and for the environment. They’re very important measures, as well, that I believe speak to the potential of Ontario and the intentionality that our government has shown in turning around the vast ship of state that I spoke about in the last leadoff to third reading of Bill 46, the Less Red Tape, Stronger Ontario Act.

Speaker, I’m going to speak a little bit about some of the pieces that are contained in this package. I know the minister spoke quite eloquently about a number of the measures that are also in this package, and I know that there are a variety of approaches in both the regulatory and the legislative aspects of our spring red tape reduction package.

I think is important to perhaps just share a little bit of the impetus—why we believe it’s so important to reduce onerous red tape, why we believe it’s important to unleash opportunities for the people of this province and ensure that we are being responsive and nimble in modernizing our systems as we always look to improve, as we always look to make it easier to raise a family, easier to start a business, and easier to live, work and play here in the province of Ontario.

Perhaps to go back to someone I’ve quoted and back to, I believe, this quote I’ve brought forward here in the chamber before—it’s something that speaks to our impetus and my passion for this area. It’s a quote from Alexis de Tocqueville. Of course, I am sure we all know Alexis de Tocqueville and his treatise Democracy in America, where he visited the then fledgling United States of America and was amazed by their commitment to democracy, was amazed by the political processes that they had in place, and was amazed at the awareness of the citizens about what their governments were doing and the determination to ensure that a free, prosperous and democratic society succeeded. I believe that here in Ontario and in Canada we share a similar enthusiasm. We share, obviously, many similar, albeit more loyalist, historic appreciations for these values.

I think his quote is very relevant because it speaks to the potential danger in letting red tape grow unfettered. It speaks to the need for all of us to realize that a little change here and a little change there might not seem like that big of a deal in and of itself, but rules upon rules upon rules can stifle out ingenuity, stifle out creativity, stifle out innovation and, in fact, create a static economy, one that isn’t nimble and growing.

He spoke about what he believed to be a despotism that could come to America. He didn’t feel that this despotism would be perhaps the grand or the more dictatorial despotism that had been experienced in some of the European nations, but he felt it would be relatively mild, retaining some of the external forms of liberty, but that the people would behave like timid animals and the government would act like their shepherd.

This is how Alexis de Tocqueville in his analysis of this spoke about what this could look like. He said:

“After having thus taken each individual one by one into its powerful hands, and having molded him as it pleases, the sovereign power”—the state—“extends its arms over the entire society; it covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated, minute, and uniform rules, which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot break through to go beyond the crowd; it does not break wills, but it softens them, bends them and directs them; it rarely forces action, but it constantly opposes your acting; it does not destroy, it prevents birth; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, it represses, it enervates, it extinguishes, it stupefies, and finally it reduces each nation to being nothing more than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”

Again, still quoting Alexis de Tocqueville, he said, “I have always believed that this sort of servitude, regulated, mild and peaceful, of which I have just done the portrait, could be combined better than we imagine with some of the external forms of liberty, and that it would not be impossible for it to be established in the very shadow of the sovereignty of the people.”

We see in his analysis of the small, minute, complicated and uniform rules, which do not break wills, but soften them, bend them and direct them, the danger of onerous red tape. We saw under the former Liberal government for many years an inexorable, continual growth in the small, minute wills that enervate and hinder the wills of the people, those rules that were, frankly, onerous and burdensome and often had little to no practical rationale for their existence.

Our government took that vast state of regulations here in the province of Ontario, where we had seen regulation growth year after year after year, constant growth in the number of regulations and the amount of time, energy and money that was spent in trying to deal with these regulations, and we actually were able to turn that ship around. Perhaps not all at once, but we were able to turn that ship of state around, and now we have seen a 6.7% reduction in overall regulations and in red tape here in the province of Ontario—

Interjections.

I think it’s one thing to say, “That’s a reduction,” but to stop that momentum—momentum is a very powerful thing. I’m sure we’ve all heard about momentum, especially in campaigns. You can feel it, right? When the momentum stalls, it’s a very tangible feeling where you’re not sure where you’re going, you’re not sure what you’re doing. But when you have the momentum and you’re heading in the right direction, that momentum can carry you through and just accelerate.

But also negative momentum, where things are on a downward spiral, you can feel that as well. When you’re spiralling down and when we’re seeing things get worse and worse, it almost can accelerate. I think that that’s what we saw under the Liberal government: acceleration in the number of new regulations. At a certain point it was almost like they threw their hands up in the air and they said, “You know what? Forget it. We already have hundreds and hundreds of thousands of regulations. At this point, why would we even bother trying to reduce red tape? We might as well embrace our role.” So the Liberals, supported by the NDP, continued their campaign to ensure that it was next to impossible to be a successful small business owner here in the province of Ontario just because of the sheer amount of red tape that they created.

For us to be able to not just stop that continual increase of red tape but to begin that reduction—I believe we have momentum, and that’s a momentum we’re going to continue to work through. Today’s bill is an important piece of that story. This story hasn’t been written in the past—eight red tape bills alone—and it’s not going to be written in this one. It’s a continual story, one that we’re all participating in, one that we’re all adding to by our contributions, by your citizens’ contributions to the red tape reduction portal, by the consultations that the minister spoke about that he participated in, reaching out to people in our community, by the active team that we have at the Ministry of Red Tape Reduction, and by each and every one of you, as caucus colleagues, bringing forward ideas and saying, “How can we make it easier for people to be able to thrive and succeed? How can we unleash their potential and ensure the entrepreneurial spirit is strong here in the province of Ontario, as it has been for so long prior to the dark days of the Liberal government?”

I want to pick up where the minister left off, having laid out that context as to why we believe it’s so important to take the actions that we’re taking here in this red tape reduction package. I want to speak a little bit about a few more items in this red tape reduction bill and how they’re going to make a real impact on the lives of people across government.

When we formed government in 2018, we saw that under the leadership of the previous Liberal government, supported by the NDP, Ontario was the most heavily regulated province in the country. We knew that that had to change, so when we came to office, we set out on our mission to remove the unnecessary and outdated regulations holding this province back, and we did.

Our government has made a commitment to increase jobs and investment in Ontario by making it less expensive, faster and easier to do business and to set out one of the best regulatory service standards in North America. We’re following through on that commitment today. Our government has taken more than 450 actions to reduce burdens while continuing to look for ways to improve.

We pledged to introduce two high-impact red tape reduction bills each year, one in the spring and one in the fall, and we’ve followed through with that commitment.

The government has also passed nine high-impact pieces of red tape reduction legislation in the past five years and today we’re here debating the 10th. We made a commitment to save Ontario businesses, including not-for-profit organizations and the broader public sector, at least $400 million in annual compliance costs by March 2022. I’m pleased to state, for the record, that not only have we met this goal, but we have far exceeded it.

Our red tape reduction measures so far have saved businesses, not-for-profit organizations, municipalities, school boards, colleges, universities and hospitals, not to mention many individuals in this province, nearly $700 million in annual compliance costs. That’s $700 million each year that Ontario businesses and organizations and public serving-groups can put to better use as a result of our changes. It is part of our newest red tape reduction act, the Less Red Tape, Stronger Economy Act, that will save Ontario businesses even more, once fully implemented.

Speaker, we’ve come a long way. We’re proud of the work that we’ve been able to accomplish and we’re grateful for the ideas that we have received from so many stakeholders, from so many hard-working entrepreneurs, from so many honest and hard-working workers, from so many seniors and from so many citizens in our ridings who have provided their ideas of on-the-ground solutions. These people from across the province haven’t just fed that to us in the Ministry of Red Tape Reduction; we’ve had fantastic partnerships with our partner ministries. The legislation that is in front of us today had 17 different ministries that have been involved. I want to acknowledge those ministries for their work as well, for their participation in this process, for continually feeding back their ideas.

I’m going off on a little tangent here, but one of the things that people don’t always, I think, realize about the legislative calendar is that there’s actually only a limited amount of time to be able to pass bills. There are often areas in different ministries—I know this having worked in different ministries—that might have particular solutions to issues that are coming up in their bailiwick, if you will, in their ministry, and yet they might not have a legislative option to bring forward a bill on that particular item. So what often we’re able to do if they are relevant to the Ministry of Red Tape Reduction in terms of reducing unnecessary regulations or onerous processes is take those great ideas from the ministries, whether that’s the Ministry of Colleges and Universities or the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Sport, the Ministry of Health, or any of these other organizations, these incredibly hard-working ministries who have great ideas about what should be done to streamline processes while maintaining health, safety and the environment. We can sit down with them, go through those ideas and see if they work within our packages. It’s a way also of ensuring that we’re able to move rapidly on those issues.

Otherwise, what can happen, with the greatest respect to the government House leader’s team and the incredible work that they do, is there might not always be the opportunity for a legislative package for people to move those items through. Sometimes it can just be because there are only a few items that they want to move through, and it might not be able to justify a stand-alone piece of legislation in terms of just the constraints that we have on the hours of debate that are available in the Legislature.

We’re able to work with those ministries and those partners, and the minister is always ensuring that at that cabinet table—I’m sure he’s speaking about the ability that we have to work with them to bring forward good ideas and to be a conduit of sorts, as well as through our own outreach and our continual conversations with people in every corner of the province. I think it’s an important thing to remember, because it’s not just our ministry; there’s obviously—

Interjections.

Thank you for the support of the tangent. I won’t do it too often, I promise.

Speaker, we’ve come a long way, and we’re proud of the work we’ve accomplished so far. We’re also grateful for the ideas that we’ve received from so many across this province which have allowed us to continue delivering on our commitment to support economic competitiveness and create high-quality jobs and an attractive investment climate.

I want to tell you a little bit more about the work that we do. People always ask, “Okay, so, what does it actually mean to reduce red tape? Walk me through what that process looks like.” I’m going to walk through a little bit of this partly by talking about the Modernizing Ontario for People and Businesses Act. This is an important piece of legislation, something that we follow in the Ministry of Red Tape Reduction to ensure that every new regulation that comes forward isn’t onerous or burdensome for the people of Ontario. Every time we consider a new idea that crosses our path, we draw on the seven guiding principles contained in this act.

The first principle is that we should recognize national and international standards whenever possible. What this means is—this is a little bit of a challenging one, because everyone likes to think they’re “made in.” Everyone wants to have a made-in-Ontario solution, and I understand that. We need flexibility. We need to have a responsibility to interact with the local needs here in Ontario, and I respect that. I have lots of family in Alberta, and they’re always very like, “Made in Alberta: We’re going to do a made-in-Alberta strategy,” and I’m like, “Well, we have a really great idea here. You could pick it up and use it.” They’re like, “No, it needs it be made in Alberta,” so they remake the wheel every time. We’ve seen that with some other provinces as well. I won’t name any names—Quebec.

But I also think that it’s important to recognize best international standards and national standards. If there are ways that we can work with those existing standards and they protect the people of Ontario, they’re able to provide flexibility within that standard to allow our local organizations here in Ontario to be responsive to our needs but yet not create a whole new list of standards that then have to be duplicated and done again at the national or international level—the very first principle we have in the Ministry of Red Tape Reduction is to recognize national and international standards which should be adopted when possible. That’s our first principle: to make sure that we have accessibility for the broadest possible part of the economy and that people in our province or others who come to our province to invest are able to also recognize those standards and have options across this province. So we recognize that harmonizing requirements across jurisdictions reduces costs and makes it easier to do business across borders.

Our second pillar is that small businesses should have less onerous compliance requirements compared to larger businesses. I think this instinctively makes sense to people, recognizing that small businesses don’t have some of the same resources or expertise as their larger counterparts to focus on compliance.

I think there’s a recognition that if you’re in a small mom-and-pop shop, you probably shouldn’t be having to deal with some of the same regulatory requirements as if you’re a massive industrial setting. I would imagine that if you’re a small machine shop in my riding, in Beamsville, you shouldn’t have some of the same requirements that Dofasco does down the road, obviously, where they’re literally boiling enormous vats of liquid steel. They need to have slightly different requirements than a machinist working out of a small shop in Beamsville. There’s an understanding that we have to be flexible within our regulatory system and recognize that larger organizations have some of the resources and the expertise to deal with particular issues that perhaps a smaller organization doesn’t, so our second principle is that they should have less onerous compliance compared to larger businesses.

Our third principle is that any entity subject to regulations should be provided accessible digital services whenever possible, because in 2023, we shouldn’t be asking people or businesses to fill out long paper forms anymore. If any of you don’t have the YouTube Premium subscription—I don’t—

Interjection.

Mr. Speaker, this petition is entitled, “Reducing Red Tape in Ontario.

“Whereas the Ontario government introduced the Less Red Tape, Stronger Economy Act, 2023, which, if passed, would pave the way for better services, help Ontario businesses grow and save people time; and

“Whereas red tape is a key part of building a stronger economy and improving services for Ontarians, which is why our government is continuing to bring forward burden reduction packages that are saving businesses nearly $700 million each year in compliance costs; and

“Whereas Ontario’s spring 2023 red tape reduction package includes 42 new initiatives that, when fully implemented, are estimated to save businesses, not-for-profits and the broader public sector $119 million in net annual regulatory compliance costs; and

“Whereas the Ministry of Red Tape Reduction continues its work to develop further packages, people and businesses are encouraged the red tape portal at ontario.ca/redtape;

“We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as follows:

“To immediately pass Bill 91, the Less Red Tape, Stronger Economy Act, 2023.”

I proudly affix my signature and will give it to page Keya.