Making businesses in West Central Alberta and elsewhere more competitive is one of the principal goals of a newly formed provincial task force, says chairman and Rocky Mountain House-Sundre MLA Ty Lund.The Red Tape Reduction Task Force was announced last week. As well as Lund, the task force includes MLA Robin Campbell, Dr. Neil Brown, Kyle Fawcett and Art Johnson.The task force will be consulting with business organizations, including chambers of commerce, over the next two months, gathering input about current regulations and suggestions for change, said Lund.ìWe want to make sure that small businesses can be competitive,î said Lund. ìWhen you consider the number of small businesses in the province, they really are the engine that drives the economy.ìWhat we are going to try to do is find out where small business has a problem, all the way from startup. I've always maintained that in those kinds of regulation we should be looking at what is the desired outcome and leave it up to the business to decide how to get there.îOver a third of people working in Alberta work for small business, he said.The task force will be gathering input in a number of ways.ìThis is really going to be a bottom's up process,î he said. ìWe are going to talk to the chambers of commerce and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business and others.ìWhat I'm going to do right away is send a memo to all MLAs and ask them to contact their local chambers and see if the business people in their communities have problems with specific provincial government regulations and then we would look at those.îThe Alberta government has recently set up a parallel committee to look at provincial industries and how regulations may be hurting their competitiveness.ìWe will be looking at some of those larger issues as well, but our real focus will be small business,î Lund said. ìWe are going to also be looking to see how Alberta stacks up against Saskatchewan and B.C. We are going to also stretch out and look at Ontario and Manitoba as well.îAs Rocky Mountain House-Sundre MLA since 1989, Lund says he has already seen examples of regulations that aren't necessarily great for business.ìOne prime one dealt with West Fraser in Sundre,î he said. ìBecause they have a boiler, they have to have a Class 3 steam engineer on site all the time even though it's not a high-pressure vessel. That's an example of a very big cost.îThe task force is scheduled to release its final report, including recommendations, by the end of March. Lund says he hopes to make that deadline, although that will depend in large measure on the amount of input the task force receives.ìThere are something like 1,100 regulations out there,î he said. ìSome regulations have led to the creation of policies and I suspect we will find quite often that it's an interpretation of a regulation that creates a policy that may not be all that necessary.îWhile the task force will be making recommendations for changes to regulations, it will certainly not be calling for the elimination of all regulations, he said.ìWe are not saying we are going to get rid of all regulations, of course, because good regulations are what make for good business,î he said. ìWe have to be able to sustain the environment and have health and safety protected, so there will still be regulations. We want to make sure there's no regulations that don't add any value.îSundre Chamber of Commerce president Sherry Tytkanych says she is pleased to hear the task force will be consulting chambers as part of the input-gathering process.ìI think it would be a help to our businesses to get rid of any unnecessary regulations,î she said.
