The Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) has announced its 2025 Paperweight Awards. This is where they showcase the most significant examples of red tape mismanagement in Canada.

This year the ‘ winner’ is the Manitoba Government for backtracking on regulatory accountability with the introduction of Bill 16. CFIB says Manitoba’s Regulatory Accountability Reporting Act and Amendments to The Statutes and Regulations Act strips away all of the province’s regulatory accountability tools, undoing years of progress.

Also making the list was the federal government’s GST/HST tax holiday which the CFIB says became a logistical nightmare with little time to prepare for the implementation date.

And in Les Cèdres, Quebec a bylaw requires local children fill out an annual form indicating what street they would like to play on, obtain signatures from two-thirds of the adult residents living on the relevant street, and then submit their form to the recreation director- or risk getting fined up to $1,000. Click here for the full list.