Premier McNeil earns honourable mention in national red tape reduction awards

Halifax, January 22, 2016 – To close out Red Tape Awareness Week™, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) announced this morning that Nova Scotia Premier, Stephen McNeil, has received an Honourable Mention Golden Scissors Award.  The Honourable Mention Award recognizes the efforts of the premier to remove red tape for apprenticeship labour mobility within Canada.  The Golden Scissors Award is given each year to an individual in government who has done the most to cut red tape to free up time for small business owners, which allows them to focus on operating and growing their business.

A former small business owner/operator, the premier addressed a significant challenge for qualified labour in Nova Scotia.  Premier McNeil led the charge on an agreement between provinces and territories to recognize each other’s technical training programs, work experience and examination results for apprentices. The move helps Canadians find jobs and helps businesses find workers. It is also a positive step in the direction of achieving a new agreement on internal trade.

“This is a great example of government taking a common sense approach to mutual recognition of training and accreditation of apprenticeship hours from one province to the next,” said Nick Langley, CFIB’s director for Nova Scotia. “Our labour force is mobile and in order to give qualified labour the ability to come back or to be attracted to Nova Scotia, workers need to have their apprenticeship hours counted regardless of what province they worked in.”

The national Golden Scissors Award was given jointly to Quebec ministers Sam Hamad, and Jean-Denis Girard, for leading and implementing measures to reduce red tape on small businesses.  In addition, two other Honourable Mentions were also announced today:

Hon. Alan McIsaac, Prince Edward Island Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries. As former Minister for Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal, Minister McIsaac introduced a one-time farm vehicle registration to replace annual registration. The move will save farmers from having to re-register their vehicles every year.

Hon. Nancy Heppner, Saskatchewan Minister of Highways and Infrastructure and Hon. Jeremy Harrison, Saskatchewan Minister Responsible for Trade. Ministers Heppner and Harrison worked together to change provincial regulations for wide-load signs on trucks to match neighbouring Alberta. Now, businesses don’t need two different signs for each truck, and drivers no longer need to risk life and limb at the side of the road to switch signs when crossing the provincial border.

See the full list of Finalists.

For more information please contact Nick Langley at 902-420-1997 or nick.langley@cfib.ca.

CFIB is Canada’s largest association of small- and medium-sized businesses with 109,000 members across every sector and region.