Love him or hate him, Mayor John Tory is certainly cutting through a lot of the City’s red tape in his first weeks in office.
I have a plea on behalf of all of us who do (or try) to do business in the City: please fix the Licensing process next.
Toronto’s process is the most cumbersome in the GTA and it’s almost impossible to get things done in a timely manner. When licenses are not obtained in a timely manner, by-law officers issue tickets. Tickets then turn into Court dates and the Court proceedings are always withdrawn when the City’s delays (which are documented) are brought to the Prosecutor’s attention.
It’s not the fault of the staff. The computer system in Licensing is a DOS based system. I’m not kidding. I remember DOS, I used it in Law School many, many years ago. It’s time to upgrade that system.
Licensing is a very important part of doing business in the City: it shouldn’t be this hard to get “permission” to earn money and pay taxes!