New Brunswick government should eliminate needless occupational licences to help workers

In New Brunswick, as in all other provinces, the provincial government requires some workers to obtain a licence to do their jobs. When people think of occupational licensure, they might think of a licence to practice medicine, but brain surgeons aren’t the only ones who cannot work without a licence. For example, landscapers and bricklayers must obtain a licence before working in New Brunswick.

While there’s not much evidence that licensure protects consumers or improves safety, it does seem to raise prices and limit opportunities for work. And according to new data, more occupational licences are required in New Brunswick than in most provinces and neighbouring U.S. states, and this hurts workers.

Specifically, among all Canadian provinces and U.S. states, the New Brunswick government requires licences at the sixth-highest rate, with requirements for licences in 53 of 104 job categories licenced in Canada. And New Brunswick requires licences in more job categories than Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Labrador, Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire.

For some job categories—including doctors, dentists, lawyers and accountants—every jurisdiction in Canada and the United States requires a licence. But New Brunswick’s relatively high licensing burden means many jobs are licenced here but not in other jurisdictions. And in many cases, the rationale for requiring a licence is weak.

So, what’s the problem?

To obtain a licence for these jobs, workers must spend hundreds or even thousands of hours on often useless education requirements, take tests, pay fees and jump through other hoops. For example, an aspiring bricklayer in New Brunswick must complete a three-to-four-year program that combines 5,400 hours in an apprenticeship and an additional 24 weeks of classroom instruction, culminating in an exam. These barriers tend to be harder to clear for non-native speakers, those with less education, and those with lower income and less ability to pay fees and tuition.

Not only do licence requirements potentially hurt individual workers, they tend to lead to less hiring by raising compliance costs in licenced fields. Moreover, research from around the world has shown no strong relationship between licence requirements and safety or higher-quality services in these fields. But again, licence requirements do seem to raise consumer prices and limit opportunities for workers.

To help workers in the province, the Holt government should eliminate needless licensing requirements. In a positive move, the government recently made it easier for workers to transfer licences to and from New Brunswick and other provinces. This allows the free flow of workers to where they’re most needed as determined by consumers and worker interest. A good next step would be to reduce the number of jobs that require a licence, so workers have the freedom to enter their field of choice and government regulation doesn’t needlessly constrain the labour supply.

All regulation imposes costs, but just because brain surgery requires a licence in New Brunswick doesn’t mean that other occupations should, too. The Holt government can help workers by dropping the province’s unnecessary licensing requirements.