Further waste of taxpayer dollars. The main problem isn’t in competing for government contracts, it’s in a regulatory environment that’s literally gone mad as each regulatory agency tries to do the impossible in administrating often inane regulations that overlap and even sometimes conflict with one another while making sure its own ass is covered completely.

Is it a sane system which forces the small business to bear a cost for getting all the approvals for something it wants to do that now often exceed the actual cost of doing it? Not to mention all the time this seemingly perpetual process can take?

I don’t think so. What it does is force many small businesses that could well be self sustaining and completely viable if they were given the freedom they enjoyed in the past to operate into trying to become larger businesses in an attempt to spread those unnecessary regulatory costs over a larger volume of sales. Which, unfortunately, are often just not there.

If this is directed at small business it only makes one think who is getting the contracts now? Big business perhaps??

What difference would it make to the number of jobs when you rob Peter, to pay Paul, to hire people???

Isn’t senior advisor another term for patronage position?

“”The Provincial Government has announced the appointment of a senior advisor””

I take it that neither Jim1313 nor socredible has actually ever tried to bid on a government contract? Dealing with useless snivel servants and their endless red tape and their really, really, twisted views is quite a daunting task. Half the people employed by the government are totally incompetent and useless.

I agree with axman insofar as some Government employee’s go.

As for cutting red tape. Governments have been talking about cutting red tape for years, however it never seems to get done.

We need Government Employee’s jobs tied to their ability to provide necessary services, in a timely fashion. If they cannot meet the prescribed criteria, then they should be let go, and others hired who can and will do the jobs correctly.

Whats the chance of that happening??

We don’t want to compete for government contracts. What does our small business get out of this? Nada, nothing, zip, zilch. Big waste of money if you ask me. Why aren’t government contracts easy for small business to get in the first place? Isn’t the system for obtaining them legit?

“Small businesses are the heart and soul of BC’s communities. They account for 29-percent of BC’s GDP.”

So it does not say anywhere in the article what the percentage of the government business value they access.

More or less than 29%?

It goes on to say that “His mandate is to increase small business procurement by 20-percent.”

That seems to imply that they are getting less than 29% of the government business.

So are government contracts more lucrative than private contracts?

Perhaps these small businesses are doing well by providing subcontracting services to the larger businesses who are better able to deal with government. The small businesses then have less administrative costs thus being leaner and more efficient at delivering the actual goods and services.

Again, these kind of announcements are totally useless to anyone who does not like government BS.

When I had a business that would seek government contracts I found the cost of bid insurance and things like ISO certification where effective tools for government to weed out the small business entrepreneurs.

Free enterprise at its essence is about equalizing opportunity based on the merit of the end product. A single process with the same rules for all is essential, but so too is the creation of a competitive market by limiting a monopolization of the market share by corporations that have outside advantages that slant the table in their favor. Ideally we would have at least four strong competitors in each industry.

Free enterprise is also about shared infrastructure that enables all to compete on a level playing field due to the public infrastructure that eliminates it as a major consideration to the cost of doing business. Weather it be public health care in Canada, public EI programs, WCB, public highways, public primary education… they all equalize opportunity in the business community.

In America competitiveness often comes down to the rates a corporation has to pay for health care, and not the actual operating costs of the company… so AIG picks the winners and not the actual performance of the company. Not so here in Canada because we have a level playing field when it comes to providing our employees with health care, so business competes on business and not on a cost for health care basis… in this regard Canada is free enterprise friendlier than America (with all health care benefits being equal). Same goes for bid insurance and the influence it has on limiting the number of bidders to the process.

In China the state picks the winners through access to the national subsidies in work standards, environmental regulations, but most importantly through access to the procurement process. China can be called capitalist yes, but it can not be called free enterprise because of these built in bias subsidies for the winners that tilt the playing field away from equal opportunity and more towards nepotism… China can be more accurately called monopoly capitalism (with the communist party being the ultimate monopoly).

A real issue for Canadians should be when we have Canadian firms that are competing for contracts with off shore firms that are not all things being equal, but rather one side upholding a higher standard bidding against another that has a built in advantage to tilt the playing field in their favor.

Even worse than the off shore firms with built in advantage is when we have domestic laws that are regressive to the point that they apply a value added tax to revenue before earnings are ever made. Small business A has to pay this tax before they ever see a profit, and so the entrepreneurial risk is huge… where as large business B has built in revenue that just absorbs the cost of doing business (and maintaining a monopoly)… thereby limiting new entrants willing to take the risk.