The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.
What does Kathleen Wynne have against hairstylists? The nice young woman who snips my bangs would like to know. To her surprise, she is now being regulated by a new body called the Ontario College of Trades. It wants her to fork over $120 every year (plus tax) for a piece of paper saying she’s qualified to do her job.
In order to get a licence, hairstylists already log 1,500 hours of school, write exams and serve apprenticeships. Now they must also have a Grade 12 diploma and pass a written government test. But hey! When it comes to protecting the public from rogue snippers, you can never be too careful.
The hairdresser tax is a small but potent example of what’s gone wrong in Ontario over the past decade. As manufacturing evaporated and jobs dried up, the Liberal government threw sand in the gears. All its instincts are regulatory and interventionist. At a time when we desperately need smaller businesses to create jobs, it has ratcheted up the cost of doing business and smothered them in red tape.
Meanwhile, it’s kept spending as if the good times never stopped. Prudent Ontarians used to deplore Quebec – those profligate French! – as the free-spending wastrel of Confederation. But now, we’re the wastrel. Our dour Scottish accountant forebears must be spinning in their graves.