Idle Legislative Hands

The legislature of the tiny (population: approximately 140,000) province of Prince Edward Island has apparently had a light legislative calendar of late. 

While franchising in some provinces (most notably Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia and Alberta) makes up a significant amount of the small business sector, it is unlikely that the same can be said for small Prince Edward Island (I can't find information on how many franchises actually operate in Prince Edward Island, but I'm guessing there's a Tim Horton's).

Even so, in a flurry of legislative activity, the Prince Edward Island legislature has promulgated the Franchises Act, which is modelled largely on Ontario's Arthur Wishart Act (Franchise Disclosure).  This appears to be at least somewhat of a blow to the Uniform Law Conference of Canada's efforts to provide a generally-accepted model of franchise legislation for provinces across Canada to draw upon. 

The Uniform Law Conference adopted a Model Franchises Act in 2004 (itself seemingly largely modelled on the Arthur Wishart Act (which, was itself modelled after the Alberta Franchises Act (although you probably won't get anyone in Ontario to admit that), in the hope that provincial legislatures which currently do not have franchise legislation (there are now 7 such provinces) would use it as a model for their own legislation in the future.

While this may be discouraging, it shouldn't be particularly surprising for the Uniform Law Conference of Canada, which has produced a library of perhaps useful, but largely unused uniform and model laws.

In the interim, if you're planning on being the fourth franchise into Prince Edward Island, keep the (so far unproclaimed) Franchises Act in mind.  Idle legislative hands are the Devil's tools.