The Town of Huntsville and business people are about to find a ‘pal’ within the next few weeks that will assist in securing the necessary paperwork to speed up the permit process.

The economic development advisory committee was given a demonstration of

BizPal on March 11. The program is an online service that simplifies the business permit, licence and other compliance regulation processes for entrepreneurs, governments, and third-party business service providers.

The service’s primary goals are to slash document research time and help entrepreneurs start up faster.

For government, BizPal provides the assurance that business clients will have the information they need to meet all permit

and licence requirements quickly and efficiently. It also provides a way to improve the

service experience for business clients, while gaining a competitive edge over other jurisdictions.

The customer is walked through a series of simple, generic questions about the business and is then provided with a list of documents from the various levels of government they need to make their enterprise a reality.

Each point of access through the question section provides the client with comprehensive and customized information collected from all the participating jurisdictions.

The customer then prints the documents off, fills them out and takes them to the necessary government department for approval.

Margaret Stead, the town’s GIS co-ordinator, walked the committee through the demonstration. She said that there is no cost for the program’s use, adding that other Muskoka municipalities such as Muskoka Lakes and Lake of Bays township presently use the system.

She said that some federal and provincial level governments may provide licence and permit forms to be filled in and submitted online. “Currently for the Town of Huntsville with specific permits and licences, the user must fill them out and then either submit them by fax, e-mail as a scanned attachment, or drop them off in person.”

Mayor Claude Doughty said he was impressed with the program, based on his past business experiences as a developer. “I had a previous

life that involved chasing permits. That’s great and I think, notwithstanding our constraints

from an IT perspective, that some point in the future, every licence should be submitted and paid for online and you get it mailed back to you,” he said.

Economic development and grants officer John Finley said that the program is presently in the testing stages on the municipality’s website. BizPal should be available to the public for permanent use within the next two weeks. ?