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One Way to Cut Red Tape
The Beef Cattle Marketing Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. B.5, s. 3, provides:
3(1) Except under the authority of a licence, no person shall sell cattle.
(2) Every person who sells cattle shall be deemed to be the holder of a licence.
This technique certainly cuts down on unnecessary paper work!
I did not find this; a colleague directed me to it. He described it as “the best tautological statutory provision” that he had seen.
I wonder if there’s a fee for the licence that one is deemed to hold, and if so, who gets the money?
Notional fee, paid notionally. I think one notionally reports payment to someone called Harvey.
There is an actual licence fee imposed by regulation under s. 5 of the Act, and payable to the Ontario Cattlemen’s Association. So the provision is a kind of private tax, supported by statute. No need for publicly-funded red tape to manage the system. Section 4 of the Act says what the Association may do with the money.
There may be administrative reasons for doing it in this two-step way (one step forward, one step back – except that when you finish you’re short a licence fee), rather than simply providing that every person who sells cattle shall pay $2 per head to the Association.