Government Operations committee  There is definitely a culture change. It started two years ago. There is definite support from Health Canada for this piece of legislation. As described, the administrative burden reduction has been implemented over the past couple of years.

Government Operations committee  It's exactly the same at Health Canada.

Government Operations committee  I think those are excellent points that Mr. Beale made. Over the past two years since the actual Red Tape Reduction Commission did its work, we spent a lot of time internally looking at the way we do regulations and actually ensuring that we had the necessary training. There wa

Government Operations committee  First of all, there are two parts of the legislation. I think it's important to look at that. There's the administrative burden that can be added with a regulatory amendment. It doesn't have to be a new title of a regulation. If a regulation is advanced that's an amendment to a

Government Operations committee  There are two sides to it. The regulatory process is an 18- to 24-month period. I had mentioned earlier the consultations, the engagement, the analysis, and the process and that does take time. At the same time, we are seeing an impact, I think, in the early days because we have

Government Operations committee  The Minister of Health announced earlier this year that we have a regulatory transparency and openness framework. She has outlined in the document, and the department has followed through with, improving the transparency around our regulatory environment. We are improving and bei

Government Operations committee  It goes back a couple of years now. It actually goes back to the beginning when the regulatory reform...when the Red Tape Reduction Commission went out and actually talked to our stakeholders. In those early days we were part of that, and we heard back from the stakeholders about

Government Operations committee  I'm not aware of the process.

Government Operations committee  I want to clarify one point and perhaps my opening remarks were not clear. It's not that health and safety regulations are exempt from the legislation. What I have conveyed is that there are opportunities to reduce administrative burdens when we do advance regulations or look bac

Government Operations committee  Well, the actual changes that were made for the pharmacy technicians were made last year. It followed the regulatory reform announcement in 2012 and the work of the Red Tape Reduction Commission. A previous witness did mention the culture change. We did start to make those change

Government Operations committee  At Health Canada we have 95 regulations.

Government Operations committee  Yes, for sure. Advancing any new regulation doesn't happen overnight. I think what's important is that we start the policy analysis process. We do international comparisons. Sometimes, and we've done this most recently on nutrition labelling, we undertake an online consultation

Government Operations committee  Sure, I can start. We take an approach where we outline in our forward plan the regulations that we will be advancing, and under this legislation, we are required to remove or repeal a regulation only if administrative burden has been added with a new regulation. It's not for ev

Government Operations committee  In the department, there is planning for the regulations that will be put in place. We also consult on which regulations will be repealed. It is a very open and transparent process. We do engage stakeholders throughout that process, through our pre-consultation phase, and then al

Government Operations committee  Along the same lines, with forward planning, with the two-year forward plan, and a regular review of the regulations that we have in place, there is that flexibility also with the two years. There's the flexibility of carrying a balance forward. I've mentioned we do have a balanc