Mandatory Small Business Impact Checks for Bills
An Act to amend the Department of Industry Act (small businesses)
Summary
- Requires the Minister of Industry to review every government bill and table a small business impact assessment (SBIA) when provisions could significantly affect small businesses; SBlAs for proposed regulations must be published with the draft in the Canada Gazette.
- Adds a statutory duty for the department to protect and promote the role of small businesses and to apply a "net positive impact" principle to their sustainability when assessing legislative initiatives.
- Directs regulations to define significance thresholds, set the SBIA process and required contents, and include quantitative and qualitative cost–benefit analysis focused on firms with fewer than 50 employees.
- Specifies core assessment factors: access to finance, investment conditions, participation in a competitive marketplace, and whether the overall impact is beneficial to small businesses.
Builder Assessment
Mandating small business impact assessments across government bills and regulations is a pro-growth, pro-competitiveness guardrail that can prevent harmful costs from landing on the firms that employ most Canadians. The main risks are duplication, slower policymaking, and an overly narrow definition of small business if not implemented with clear thresholds and expedited pathways for safety-critical measures.
- Integrate the SBIA with Treasury Board's existing Regulatory Impact Analysis and Small Business Lens to avoid duplication and minimize administrative burden.
- Set clear quantitative significance thresholds, public service standards, and an expedited track for emergency public safety and national security measures.
- Broaden analysis coverage to firms up to 99 employees or add revenue thresholds to reflect sectoral realities.
- Publish all SBlAs in a searchable open-data repository with methodologies, assumptions, and cost estimates to increase transparency and accountability.
- Define and operationalize the "net positive impact" test with rigorous metrics, independent review for major files, and post-implementation evaluations.
- Use standardized digital templates and triage to keep assessments fast, consistent, and low-cost.
Question Period Cards
What quantitative threshold will define a "significant effect" on small businesses, and will the minister commit to binding service standards so SBlAs never delay urgent health and safety legislation?
How will this new SBIA avoid duplicating the Treasury Board's Regulatory Impact Analysis Statement and Small Business Lens, and what are the incremental costs, staffing, and timelines at ISED to deliver it?
Why does the bill focus cost–benefit analysis on firms with fewer than 50 employees when many Canadian definitions use under 100, and how will firms with 50–99 employees be captured under the net positive impact test?
Principles Analysis
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Canada should aim to be the world's most prosperous country.
By requiring scrutiny of how laws affect small businesses—the largest source of jobs and a major share of GDP—the bill supports broad-based prosperity and reduces the risk of growth-harming legislation.
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Promote economic freedom, ambition, and breaking from bureaucratic inertia (reduce red tape).
The SBIA is designed to prevent or mitigate new burdens on small firms and embeds a net-positive impact principle; while it adds a government review step, it targets red tape at the source rather than at businesses.
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Drive national productivity and global competitiveness, including removing interprovincial trade barriers and improving labour mobility (one country, one market).
Focusing assessments on competition, investment conditions, and participation in efficient markets can curb policies that suppress SME productivity and competitiveness.
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Grow exports of Canadian products and resources, and move up the value chain by processing resources domestically rather than exporting them raw.
The bill does not directly address trade or export promotion, though healthier SMEs may indirectly export more over time.
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Encourage investment, innovation, and resource development.
It explicitly requires considering access to finance and improving conditions for investment in and by small businesses, which supports innovation and scale-up.
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Deliver better public services at lower cost (government efficiency).
A new review function could add administrative costs and time, but may avert larger downstream costs from poorly designed rules; efficiency depends on execution and avoiding duplication with existing TBS processes.
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Reform taxes to incentivize work, risk-taking, and innovation.
No tax reforms are included; fiscal incentives are unaffected.
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Focus on large-scale prosperity, not incrementalism.
This is a structural process change with potentially broad reach across all legislation, but its transformative effect depends on how rigorously it is implemented.
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Email [email protected]
PartyMember of Parliament
StatusOutside the Order of Precedence
Last updatedN/A
TopicsEconomics, Trade and Commerce
Parliament45