Paperweight Awards

Recipient: Federal Government of Canada

The federal government’s temporary GST/HST holiday, designed to boost retail sales, has instead caused administrative chaos, unexpected costs, and widespread confusion for small businesses.

Announced just before Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday—the busiest retail period of the year—the tax holiday left businesses scrambling to implement system changes with just two weeks’ notice. So far, the average business has spent a median of one full eight-hour work-day implementing the GST/HST tax break changes.

Reprogramming point-of-sale (POS) systems during the holiday season is not only time-consuming but costly, with a median estimated expense of $1,000. Adding to the burden, 66% of small businesses struggled to navigate a confusing, inconsistent, and arbitrary list of tax-exempt items, leaving many uncertain about how to apply the exemptions accurately. Toy and hobby store owners had to make judgement calls on things like adult versus child LEGO, while gift stores had to account for every item in gift baskets during their busiest times of year.

Instead of driving economic growth, businesses believe the tax holiday merely shifted consumer spending patterns to capitalize on the tax-free period, with two-thirds of small businesses anticipating delayed purchases or returns. Concurrently, 65% believe large corporations and online giants will reap far greater benefits than small businesses. By the halfway point of the tax holiday, only 5% of businesses reported an increase in sales.

Manufacturers and distributors, often unaware of their need to also adjust for the GST/HST holiday, compounded the administrative challenges for small businesses. The rushed rollout, unclear guidelines, and high costs have left many entrepreneurs feeling unsupported and frustrated.

Short-term fixes like the GST/HST holiday disproportionately impact small businesses, saddling them with unnecessary red tape and costs. To truly support Canada’s entrepreneurs, the government must focus on long-term policies that promote stability and growth instead of creating temporary, burdensome measures.

The fix: Provide affected businesses with a $1,000 credit in their GST/HST accounts to offset programming and administrative costs. Direct the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) to waive taxes owed, penalties, and interest for good faith errors made during the rushed implementation period. Focus on meaningful, permanent tax changes, such as reversing the planned 19% increase in the carbon tax. 

Recipient: Municipality of Les Cedres

Children in Les Cedres, Quebec, are free to play in the neighbourhood streets as long as the municipal government has approved their paperwork. A 2023 by-law aimed at promoting safe ‘free-play’ among children and youths has taken an unusual approach to achieving its goal by mandating children to fill out and submit paperwork to the city.

The by-law requires the bright young minds of Les Cedres to first navigate an obstacle course of municipal red tape, before they are allowed to scale imaginary mountains in their neigbourhood streets. Every summer, children must fill out a form, indicate what street they would like to play on, obtain signatures from two-thirds of the adult residents living on the relevant street, and then submit their form to the recreation director, or risk getting fined up to $1,000.

However, the red tape nightmare does not end there. Upon receipt of the form, the recreation director must submit it to the municipal council for final approval. Once approved, the street will be deemed a free-play zone where children are allowed to play, but only between the hours of 9 am to 8 pm.

While CFIB acknowledges the need to establish safety procedures to ensure that children can play safely in the neighbourhood streets, there are alternative ways to achieve that without burdening young people with paperwork.

The fix: The municipality of Les Cedres should eliminate the application process and strategize on more effective ways to achieve street safety. 

Recipient: The City of Winnipeg

Accessing basic tax information has become a headache for businesses in Winnipeg. Unlike many other municipalities that provide property tax data online for free, the City of Winnipeg offers no easily accessible information. When businesses attempt to research their tax assessments and obligations, they are forced to jump through hoops just to find out how much they owe or where they stand.

Upon contacting the city's tax department, businesses are directed to an outdated and ineffective tax search portal. To make matters worse, accessing any information comes with a minimum fee of $28 per search—just for the privilege of knowing their own tax data. This pay-to-access system feels more like a toll gate than a service, creating unnecessary costs for businesses, especially small ones trying to manage tight budgets.

This is a prime example of the kind of red tape that wastes time and resources, erodes trust, and reduces transparency, adding to the frustrations of businesses simply trying to comply with their rising tax obligations.

The fix: The city should remove the fee for residents and businesses to retrieve their tax data, fix the registration link for the page, and explore options to make this information more easily findable and accessible.  

Recipient: Toronto City Council

A group of commercial dog walkers in Toronto have been handed on a leash of bureaucracy thanks to a recent decision by city council banning them from Ramsden Park’s off-leash area. This change came after a few residents complained about noise and parking- common features of life in a busy, high-density urban neighborhood.

The city had previously allowed these dog walkers to use the park freely, but this all changed in June 2024 when the council, decided to clamp down. Now, these small business owners, who are simply trying to walk dogs in their own neighbourhood, are suddenly facing the prospect of driving across town to find another park—assuming they can even find one with the same amenities. The ban, which took effect in September 2024 without any consultation from commercial dog walkers, has sparked a petition calling for designated hours (11 a.m.–3 p.m.) rather than an outright prohibition.

The council’s decision does not just impact the livelihood of the dog walkers, it creates unnecessary hurdles for the entire community. Instead of working towards a compromise, like setting specific hours or having designated areas, the city has imposed a blanket ban that threatens these small businesses’ survival. In a city that claims to support local entrepreneurs, this decision feels like an unnecessary, anti-entrepreneurial, and heavy-handed approach to what could have been a manageable problem. 

The fix: The city should reverse the ban and implement fair, clear guidelines, such as allowing commercial dog walkers during specific hours while also ensuring their involvement in future consultations.  

The 2025 Paperweight “winner” was the Manitoba Government for its Bill 16, which dismantled years of regulatory accountability by scrapping the regulatory count and the one‑for‑one rule—key safeguards against red tape creep. Other 2025 Paperweight honourees included the federal government’s GST/HST holiday, which created widespread administrative chaos for small businesses, and a Les Cèdres, Quebec bylaw requiring children to complete annual paperwork and secure neighbour signatures just to play on their street.

Our 2024 paperweight award winners and nominees brought more red tape headaches for small businesses. Costume shops got hit with surprise duties after the CBSA reclassified their imports, Health Canada piled on costly new rules for natural health products, and Finance Canada buried payroll services in paperwork by removing a key exemption.  Read more here.

Service Canada took home the 2023 “DisService” award after epic passport delays left Canadians camping out in long lines like it was a Taylor Swift concert.  In 2022, over 1.5 million applied, facing an average 68-day wait instead of the pre-pandemic 10-20 days. With 80% experiencing frustration and 20% giving up, even Prime Minister Trudeau called it “unacceptable.” 

Weekly steak dinners. A new business license—just for changing addresses. A carbon tax rebate costing $80,000.

These are just some of the regulatory blunders CFIB members have faced over the years. We’re taking a break from handing out these dubious honours in 2021 and 2022, but you can still see who has earned the spotlight in past years below.   

Weekly steak dinners. An $80,000 carbon tax rebate. A new business license just for changing adddresses and a law that makes it difficult for doctors to give urgent medical assistance in a neighbouring province or territory experiencing a shortage. These were among 2020's horrific Paperweight Award winners. 

But who won your 2020 Business Owners' Choice Award?

The government of British Columbia's Employer Health Tax (EHT) forces business owners to pay quarterly installments based on estimates of their payroll. The calculation is unlike B.C.'s other provincial payroll tax—worker's compensation—which is charged on actual payroll rather than guesswork. If a business owner is found to have underestimated their annual payroll, they must pay the difference plus interest. 

This blunder was more than enough to secure the B.C. government 2020's Business Owners' Choice Award: Fortune Teller Finances.

Guidelines on what condiments are acceptable for workers. Confusing, contradictory laws on cannabis labels. License applications straight out of the 1970s. These are just some of the regulatory nightmares that won our 2019 Paperweight Awards. 

The Business Owners’ Choice of the worst red tape was the federal government’s web of confusion. Business owners have told us over and over again that it’s painfully hard to find information on Canada.ca and other government websites. If you CAN find the right info, it’s next to impossible to understand. 

In 2018, business owners were invited to have their say on the worst of the worst. The Business Owners’ Choice, winning by several hundred votes, was Finance Minister Bill Morneau, for adding more complexity and uncertainty to the tax code by imposing a subjective ‘reasonableness test’ on business owners who share income with family members. Other Paperweights "celebrated" Ontario's drastic labour overhaul, a sidewalk to nowhere in B.C., and Statistics Canada's compulsory, time-consuming surveys. 

2017 was another banner year for inane regulations. In addition to lemonade stand police and sidewalks to nowhere, we also saw Nova Scotia employers being required to do convoluted math to pay employees for partial shifts, Alberta agri-businesses forced to comply with employment standards that don’t recognize the realities of working on a farm, and P.E.I. residents being hit with extra taxes when selling property if the buyer is someone from another province. 

Read more and meet the rest of the winners.

Halifax wins for its new patio regulations, which cost local bars and restaurants north of $1,000 to comply with. It shared the award with the Canadian Border Services Agency, for dropping its digital small business section; and the Ontario Recycling Authority, for a complicated digital form for reporting on packaging and recycling paper. 

Runners-up included Revenu Québec for issuing a permit that construction companies had to give to clients… who then send it back to Revenu Québec. Also nominated were the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia, the Canadian Border Services Agency (twice!), Port Metro Vancouver, the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources and the Saskatchewan Ministry of Labour Relations.  

The top honour went to Plateau-Mont-Royal, for requiring businesses to replace any plastic chairs used on their patios—a costly upgrade. The Ontario Ministry of Labour shared the award for mandating that employment standards information be printed on legal-size paper.

The also-rans: Manitoba Finance Minister Greg Dewar, for costing some businesses $30,000 because of a lack of guidance; the mayor of Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie, for banning new drive-thrus; and the mayor of Sherbrooke, Que., for banning certain types of marketing banners.

The Temporary Foreign Worker Program, for becoming even more time-consuming and confusing, wins the Paperweight Award. Sharing the distinction: Multi-Material British Columbia, which required business to weigh, measure and report paper and packaging waste.

Dishonorable mentions went to the Saskatchewan Ministry of Labour Relations, for making it mandatory to get a permit to swap statutory holidays for other days off work; the Ontario Ministry of Labour, for mandating that directors, owners and independent contractors in construction buy workers’ compensation coverage; and the Quebec Ministry of Labour for continuing to outlaw cutting hair on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday in the Outaouais region.