Ontario earns A- in CFIB’s Red Tape Report Card

Written by CFIB Media Centre | Jan 29, 2025 12:00:00 PM

Toronto, January 29, 2025 – Ontario scored a strong A- (8.9/10) in CFIB’s 2025 Red Tape Report Card released today as part of its 16th annual Red Tape Awareness Week™. The grade is up from last year’s A- (8.7/10) and places Ontario in a tie with Nova Scotia for the second-best overall score after Alberta.

“We commend the Ontario government for staying laser-focused on red tape reduction since 2018,” said Julie Kwiecinski, CFIB’s Ontario director of provincial affairs. “U.S. threats to Ontario’s competitiveness over the next four years make it even more important to reduce provincial rules that stand in the way of small business success. At the same time, the Premier – as Council of the Federation chair – should work with governments across Canada on what they can control: Removing interprovincial red tape, especially internal trade barriers. Yesterday, we wrote to the Premier asking Ontario to mutually recognize all provincial and territorial regulatory standards.”

In this year’s report card, CFIB once again graded the federal government and provinces in three key areas: Regulatory Accountability (40%), Regulatory Burden (40%), and Political Priority (20%). Bonus points were awarded for accepting our 2024 call to undertake at least two red tape reduction initiatives for housing. Ontario received the full 10 bonus points for such housing initiatives as a new Building Code that streamlines processes and eliminates at least 1,730 technical variations between provincial and national requirements, and two red tape reduction packages with measures to accelerate home building.

The 2025 Red Tape Report Card grades:

Jurisdiction	Regulatory accountability  (40%)		Regulatory  burden  (40%)		Political priority  (20%)		Housing initiatives (Bonus 2%)	Overall score   and grade
Alberta	8.9	A-	9.3	A	10	A	10	9.5	A
Nova Scotia	8.8	A-	8.1	B	10	A	10	8.9	A-
Ontario	8.9	A-	7.9	B	10	A	10	8.9	A-
British Columbia	8.9	A-	8.9	A-	5.5	D	10	8.4	B+
Quebec	8.8	A-	6.7	C	9.5	A	10	8.3	B+
Saskatchewan	8.0	B	8.0	B	6.0	C-	0	7.6	B-
Federal	6.6	C	7.0	C	6.5	C-	10	7.0	C
Prince Edward Island	5.8	D	6.5	C-	6.5	C-	10	6.4	C-
Manitoba	1.8	F	8.8	A-	2.0	F	5	4.7	F
Newfoundland and Labrador	3.0	F	5.5	D	6.5	C-	0	4.7	F
New Brunswick*	5.6	D	6.0	C-	NA	NA	5	NA	NA

*Grades reflect a government change in October 2024.

“Sadly, small business owners across Canada spend over one month a year on red tape,” said Kwiecinski. “Every minute devoted to filling out unnecessary, excessive and duplicative paperwork is a minute not spent on growing the economy and creating employment opportunities for Ontarians.”

Like last year, Ontario, Alberta and Nova Scotia topped all provinces on Political Priority, scoring an A (10/10). This high grade for Ontario acknowledges, for example, that red tape reduction was a clear priority championed by the Premier and his Cabinet in 2024.

The province received a B (7.9/10) for Regulatory Burden, scoring full points for the red tape feedback mechanism on the Government of Ontario home page and for continuing to introduce two burden reduction bills every year. To improve its Regulatory Burden score, CFIB recommends that the Ontario government continue to reduce its total number of regulatory restrictions and knock down barriers to internal trade.

Ontario received an A- (8.9/10) for Regulatory Accountability, improving from last year’s B+ (8.4/10). This increase is due to the government legislating under Bill 227, 2024 (Schedule 17) that it will measure the regulatory impact on citizens, not just businesses (i.e., a regulatory impact analysis including direct compliance costs will be required on proposed rules that affect individuals and will have to be published).

To raise its Regulatory Accountability grade, we continue to encourage the government to publish regulatory documents in a format that can be automatically read and processed by a computer (i.e., CSV, JSON, or XML). This would improve transparency and accountability by allowing external access to raw government data on Ontario’s regulatory count.

People and businesses can share their red tape frustrations directly with the Ontario government at https://www.ontario.ca/page/ministry-red-tape-reduction.

For media inquiries or interviews, please contact:
Dariya Baiguzhiyeva, CFIB
647-464-2814
public.affairs@cfib.ca

About CFIB
The Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) is Canada’s largest association of small- and medium-sized businesses with 100,000 members across every industry and region, including 39,000 in Ontario. CFIB is dedicated to increasing business owners’ chances of success by driving policy change at all levels of government, providing expert advice and tools, and negotiating exclusive savings. Learn more at cfib.ca.

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