Amid unprecedented trade turmoil, Ontario’s governing Progressive Conservatives are keen to cut red tape in the provincial economy with Premier Doug Ford and his finance minister signalling that permits, and their bureaucratic hurdles, have fallen squarely in their sights.
During a recent visit to Orillia, Ont., Ford spoke about the impact “the red tape, the bureaucracy” and ultimately, permitting, can have on getting important projects to the finish line.
“Let’s not take three or four years to get a permit,” Ford said during a news conference on April 4. “Let’s not put the barriers up because there’s a grasshopper in a field and everyone has to stop and wait for that grasshopper — it’s ridiculous.”
CBC News has obtained internal draft government documents recommending a sweeping review of permits in Ontario, proposing to transform or eliminate all permits issued at the provincial and municipal levels within a year.
“Permitting in Ontario is negatively impacting competitiveness due to regulatory accumulation,” according to the documents, which also tie the proposed changes to a wider response the government is preparing to the “economic uncertainties” created by recent U.S. trade actions.
The documents have not yet gone before cabinet. But they provide a window into a possible path the government could pursue.
CBC News sent a detailed description of the documents to the premier’s office seeking comment, but a spokesperson said the government could not do so without viewing them directly. CBC News didn’t show officials the actual documents to ensure that we protect the identity of the source who provided them, in case the documents contain any identifying details.
While the premier’s office declined to address specific questions from CBC News on a potential overhaul of provincial permitting, recent comments from Ford and Ontario Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy demonstrate the government’s interest in examining the reach of this broad class of bureaucratic tools.
“We have to build more, we have to build faster, we have to get things done — a lot of that has to do with regulations, [and] permitting,” Bethlenfalvy told CBC News last week.
He said the Ontario government has been talking to Ottawa about the need to streamline permits to speed things up — whether in this province or in other jurisdictions across Canada.
But when asked about the government’s interest in permitting, as described in the documents, and other legislative measures under consideration, Bethlenfalvy declined “to talk about any specific measures that haven’t been announced.”
The finance minister also said the PC’s recent campaign platform provided indications as to some of the steps the government wants to take. The platform he referred to makes reference to “reducing red tape and barriers to building,” and specifically to accelerating “land use planning and Building Code permits approvals,” in addition to other proposals.
Permits touch many Ontarians’ lives, with a provincial government website listing permits for everything from building projects to putting a sign near a highway. There are even permits for beekeepers transferring their honey bees or equipment to someone else.
While Ontario civil servants believe the business community would be “very supportive” of a move to limit permitting, they expect a “mixed” reaction from most other stakeholders, according to the draft documents.
Social and environmental groups will likely be “unsupportive” of changes that may “raise concerns about erosion of protections and regulations,” the documents say, while the broader public may have a split opinion.
Civil servants likewise believe that Indigenous communities will have concerns, while municipalities will have something to say about having to face new requirements on permitting.
According to the documents, the government’s mitigation strategy could involve leaning on key messaging that emphasizes that any proposed changes will not negate the province’s duty to consult with Indigenous communities, nor its responsibility to uphold health, safety and environmental protections.
Paul Seaman, a partner at the Gowling WLG law firm and the national leader of its Indigenous Law Practice Group, noted that the duty to consult is triggered “any time the Crown is considering something that might impact Indigenous rights.”
On this point, the provincial government’s draft documents note that if pursuing a permit overhaul, its intention “is that the Crown will continue to meet its constitutional obligations to consult with Indigenous communities.”
But Seaman said reaching consent is the “gold standard” in such circumstances and imposing deadlines on a particular project or process may not be helpful in achieving that.
Tim Gray, executive director of Environmental Defence, predicted that presenting a permit overhaul in the context of slashing red tape would resonate with some Ontarians. But he said the public also wants to be protected from harms that permits are designed to address.
“Everybody likes less red tape, so framing it that way will have some level of popularity,” he said. “But people also like clean water, safe food, truck tires that don’t fly off and hit your windshield along the 401. There are reasons we have rules and permits in our society.”
John Milloy, a former Liberal MPP who held five cabinet portfolios during his political career, noted the key question at the core of such a process is “why do these permits exist?”
And he said there is typically an underlying reason for permits to be present, suggesting eliminating them may not be an option in some cases.
Milloy said that governments that lean into slogans rather than the substance of deregulation can also run into problems.
“This can’t be done by slogan.”
The current PC government is not the first Ontario government to zero in on red-tape reduction efforts. In 2016, for instance, the Liberal government led by premier Kathleen Wynne announced its own drive to identify and adjust regulations perceived to be “unclear, outdated, redundant or unnecessarily costly.”
The following year, the Globe and Mail reported proposed changes under consideration by that same government that would obligate it to drop old regulations if it was bringing new ones in — but in a way that would see a greater financial proportion of such burdens removed, rather than added. The Liberals did not remain in power after the 2018 election, at which time Ford’s PC party first won a mandate under his leadership.
The PC government recently secured a third term in power, leaving Ford firmly at the forefront of the provincial response to the still-unfolding trade war with the U.S.
The documents indicate that trade concerns would form part of the government rationale in a potential address of the permit landscape.
Yet some observers see the permit issue as giving the PC government the political runway to proceed with a style of deregulation that it may have favoured prior to the emergence of the trade tensions.
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“It sounds to me like Ford is trying to push something through that fits with his view of government,” Laura Stephenson, a professor of political science at Western University in London, Ont., said after hearing about the permit-related measures described in the draft documents.
Green Party Leader Mike Schreiner said that Ontarians will be looking to the government to make investments to protect workers and businesses affected by U.S. tariffs.
“We want to make investments in encouraging more business [and] job-creating investments in Ontario, we want to invest in more public infrastructure,” he said in an interview earlier this month.
“We just need to make sure it’s done in a fiscally and environmentally responsible way, and my concern is the Ford government is out to cut corners.”
