SASKATOON – Over-regulation and government red tape must be removed if Canadian businesses are to take advantage of new products and technology.
Business leaders and researchers gave that message last week to a committee reviewing the Western Economic Diversification department.
“Western diversification helped us spend $150,000 to help the American farmer. Things have gotten so muddle-headed down in Ottawa,” said Steve Stephens, research director of MicroBio RhizoGen Corp., a Saskatoon-based innoculant manufacturer.
Stephens, and others from the biotechnology and value-added agribusiness sectors, were discussing how to change the federal government’s Western Economic Diversification department. The first open forum was held Aug. 29 in Saskatoon.
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Submissions included case studies on products and new technology that were said to have been stifled by the Canadian political and business environments.
“We develop new products that could be licenced in California in 30 days for $150, that take three to five years here, and then nobody will invest in them,”said Stevens.
Others complained about inflexibility of banks and corporate lenders, as well as the “over-regulation” of biotechnology in Canada.
“When you’ve travelled to Japan to develop a new market, and you tell your Saskatchewan banker about the sales you are going to make there, and he doesn’t believe you ever went, there are going to be problems,” said Barry Rogers, president of Rogers Innovative Inc, builders of sprayers and turf equipment.
Murray McLaughlin, president of Ag-West Biotech Inc., a non-profit financial and marketing organization for the biotech industry based in Saskatoon, said western diversification is not accomplishing its original goals.
“WD should be helping facilitate growth between the industry and lenders…. WD programs should be tailored to fit the needs of business, not the other way around.”
Roy Carr, president of POS Pilot Plant in Saskatoon, told the committee that money is needed for business and marketing plans to sell products already developed.
Lloyd Axworthy, minister in charge of Western diversification, announced changes to the department’s mandate last November. He said the department would focus on small and medium-sized businesses and help with financing, rather than providing repayable grants to large projects.
“You don’t necessarily help businesses by giving them a handout of money,” said committee chair Morris Bodnar, MP for Saskatoon-Dundurn.
The committee, now travelling the four western provinces, is expected to make a report to help the department meet its new mandate.
The report is expected to be completed by the end of October.
