The Economic Implications on Canada’s Competitiveness of the Conservative Platform

In 2009, the re-elected Conservative Government led by Stephen Harper plan to achieve its target of a 20 per cent reduction in reporting requirements for small businesses and will continue to reduce the burden of unnecessary red tape and paperwork on Canada's small business sector, 9 which has a positive impact on Canada’s economic growth and competitiveness.

Small-sized businesses are those enterprises with fewer than 100 employees, “but play a vital role in Canada's economic well-being as they are a key source of economic growth and job creation in Canada. More than 98 percent of Canadian businesses are small business sectors.” 10 In the following paragraphs, I will use the economic indicator GDP and its four categories to analysis the positive economic implications on Canada’s competitiveness of the Conservative Government’s reducing paperwork burden for small business initiative.

Gross domestic product (GDP) is the total value of all goods and services produced and sold in a year within Canada’s borders measured at market prices.11It is the standard measure of the overall size of the economy. GDP is divided into four categories: Consumption, business and residential investment, government expenditures and trade deficit.12 With the Conservative’s reducing paperwork burden target implementation, small business will be easier access to essential information, reducing paperwork costs, saving time and starting up faster. The Conservative’s initiative will stimulate the small business investments, and increase in small business investments will further lead to increase the GDP, finally to increase Canada’s economy growth and competitiveness because the growth of economy is measured by the increase of GDP.

In addition, the small businesses sectors will increase work efficiency, reduce operation cost and become more profitable by reducing paperwork burden, so small business sectors will make more consumption, which will not only increase GDP, but also cause...