To kick of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business’s 11th annual Red Tape Awareness Week, the CFIB has released their 2020 Paperweight Awards.

The paperweights highlight some of the worst examples of red tape across the country.

One of the paperweights this year is Newfoundland and Labrador’s Department of Finance which requires any convenience store selling beer to only take back as many empties as bottles sold in the same transaction.

Another one is the City of Toronto. The Ontario capital requires businesses changing their address, even if it’s just next door, to re-apply for their business license as though their business has never existed.

There are no 2020 paperweights that are directly from Saskatchewan.

Below is a full list of this year’s paperweight award winners.

This year’s “Paperweights” are:

• The Government of Canada’s Labour Market Impact Assessment requirement for businesses applying to the Temporary Foreign Worker program, including costly non-refundable fees, excessively long application forms and a six-to-nine month wait to receive a decision.
• The Government of Canada and the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change’s complicated, restrictive and time-consuming Climate Action Incentive Fund SME Project stream, which requires businesses to spend five hours filling out an application and pay a minimum of $80,000 for a project just to get a partial rebate of their own carbon tax.
• The Canada Revenue Agency’s requirement for truckers who drive through provinces that charge the federal carbon tax, to fill out and return forms every quarter with complex math to show how much fuel was bought and used in each province.
• Municipalities across Canada, for out-of-date, redundant, and slow business and residential permitting processes. For example, until recently the permit process in Winnipeg only allowed booking electrical inspections to phone calls only between 8:30 and 9:30 am.
• The City of Toronto, which forces businesses changing their address (even if it’s just next door), to reapply for their business licence as though their business never existed.
• Newfoundland and Labrador’s Department of Finance, which requires any convenience store selling beer to only accept as many empties returned as bottles sold in the same transaction.
• The Government of Prince Edward Island’s Liquor Control Act prohibiting licenced dining rooms from selling liquor without food, unless they have a separate lounge licence.
• The Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons and provincial governments, for making it excessively difficult for doctors to move their licences between provinces or travel to provide urgently needed services in provinces experiencing shortages.
• The Socit des alcools du Qubec (SAQ) and the Rgie des alcools, des courses et des jeux (RACJ), for terrible communication processes which caused major losses for one convenience store owner. SAQ seized the store’s stock of 18,000 beer bottles over a late liquor sales license renewal. Though the business owner received a new licence quickly from RACJ, SAQ returned the bottles eight months later, some past their expiry date or full of worms.
• The Government of Ontario, for forcing gas stations to post a sticker on the federal carbon tax’s impact on gas prices on every pump in the province. To add insult to injury, owners must keep track of and replace lost, damaged or vandalized stickers, which is quite a task given the stickers don’t seem to be sticking!
• The Canadian Food Inspection Agency, for fining a meat producer $42,000 because his customers had purchased his product in BC and then sent it to Alberta. A tribunal exonerated the producer after a grueling four-year legal battle costing $130,000.
• Alberta Gaming Liquor and Cannabis (AGLC), for making small brewers that outsource their brewing to a “contract manufacturer” ship all final liquor products to one of only two official warehouses near Edmonton before they can sell at their store-front, even if the contractor is located right next door.
• The Government of British Columbia, for its new Employer Health Tax, which forces business owners to pay quarterly installments based on estimates of their payroll, not their actual payroll.
• British Columbia’s Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure’s “Community Benefits Agreement,” for forcing employers and employees to comply with 336 pages of complex, inflexible union rules which go as far as outlining what kind of meat and condiments are acceptable in sandwiches.