Restaurants want to cut the red tape

The creation of a new commission to examine ways to reduce red tape in business will only be successful if it finds ways to eliminate mountains of unnecessary paperwork for restaurants, members of the industry say.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper created the Red Tape Reduction Commission in January in the hopes of reducing the burden of federal regulatory requirements on businesses.

The newly-formed commission has garnered praise from one of the country’s largest business associations.

“This paper burden is found especially in redundant and repetitive surveys issued by Revenue Canada, and is a real issue for the industry,” says Garth Whyte, president and CEO of the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association (CRFA). “It’s absolutely ridiculous, and we’re excited to see it go.”

The burden of red tape is a hot-button issue for the $60-billion foodservice sector that employs more than one million people in Canada.

Restaurant owners speak

A recent survey conducted by the CRFA shows 89 per cent of restaurant owners in one Canadian market, Toronto, say the reduction of red tape is “important” or “very important” to their business, ranking higher than options including the need for 'restaurant friendly zoning’ and ‘create a more stable/certain public policy environment’.

Restaurant managers/owners wade through the paper burden.

The federal government created the commission because of this demand for change, says commission spokesperson Pierre-Alain Bujold.

“We’re working to ensure entrepreneurs and small businesses, including restaurants, can focus less on paperwork and more on growing their business and creating jobs,” says Bujold.

But to others this won't be enough to solve the problem. Harper is creating “more red tape to deal with red tape," says Liberal critic for small business Navdeep Bains

“There will be no red tape reduction in the near future, because the commission will only be presenting its findings at some point this fall,” he says. “Even then we don’t know if they’ll be incorporated into a budget or into a piece of legislation.”

“There is no firm timeline or targets, so there will be no results for small businesses, particularly in the restaurant industry, in the short-term, and even in the medium-term.”

Redundancy and repetition causing headaches

Whyte described his frustration after learning some of his members received 17-page Revenue Canada-issued surveys that included questions such as ‘what is the legal name of your business?’ and ‘what exactly does your business do?’.

“This is all information that Revenue Canada already knows, because they’ve already audited owners,” says an exasperated Whyte.

“The surveys can still be useful, but cut out the questions we’ve already answered. Do we really need a 17-page survey? No. This is a perfect example of the red tape we’re trying to cut.”

“The surveys can still be useful, but cut out the questions we’ve already answered. Do we really need a 17-page survey? No.”
This is the sort of redundant paperwork that not only costs the industry a significant amount of money, but also time, says Whyte.

“When you’re a smaller firm, and a newer firm, it’s all about time – they’re working after-hours to fill these different requirements, and they just don’t have time for this,” he says.

“Some of these owners have to hire a professional advisor who they pay to fill out surveys that Revenue Canada already has the answers to. Trust me, these owners are not doing this with smiles on their faces.”

Whyte also says he is hoping for national standards to be created in food safety and menu disclosure policy, to eliminate the burden of restaurants having to follow different policies from different levels of government.

“Think about it. If a restaurant is set up across Canada, it not only has to deal with a federal government, but ten provincial governments and a myriad of municipal governments, and they all have different rules and regulations,” he says.

“We want to cut this out.”

Bujold agrees this is the type of paper burden the government pledges to reduce.

The commission will “improve coordination among federal departments to reduce or eliminate duplication and overlap of regulatory management, so that time spent complying with federal regulation is time well spent," he says.

Finding the problems before they can be solved

The commission is currently holding a series of roundtable meetings across the nation to determine the most effective ways to reduce red tape.

It has already made stops in Kamloops, Vancouver, and Calgary, where commission head Minister of State for Small Business and Tourism Rob Moore met with small business leaders to hear which regulations and burdens are the most detrimental to businesses.

Moore will make stops in both Saskatoon and Toronto in coming weeks.

However, Bains says the commission is just recycling old ideas and he cautions the restaurant industry not to get its hopes up.

It may look all simple out front, but from behind the scenes it's a different tale.“They’ve previously announced it in their budget, they announced it in their 2008 campaign, and now the commission is more of a PR campaign, rather than an effort to actually put forth a proposal to reduce red tape.”

Bains wants the government to scrap the consultation-based commission and enact legislation, based on provincial models, immediately.

“We need to create a culture of making sure that we avoid redundancy, and we already have a number of good models to follow in different provincial jurisdictions,” says Bains. “We should start by looking at any new legislation that is brought in, to ensure it doesn’t create additional regulations.”

Whyte remains optimistic the commission will benefit the restaurant industry in the long run.

“We realize it’s going to take a lot of time to find out what all the problems are…so all the right voices can be heard before a plan is fleshed out,” says Whyte. “But we know this is only the start of the process, and at least it’s pushing the issue even further to make something happen long-term.”

Whyte says it will be worth the wait, estimating the commission will ultimately save the restaurant industry “at least tens of millions down the road.”

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