I also did a bit of background reading. I saw that you got nominated, I think, for the Golden Scissors award, which I liked, on regulatory reform.
I think what we would say on this is that it is more about, frankly, that there are too many regulations, and regulations that pile up over time. There don't seem to be sunset clauses on regulations. I hope I'm not sounding like an extremist here, but they have become like barnacles that just continue to grow. There are no sunset clauses, and they move on forward. There are literally thousands of them that are there.
Again, what worried us in particular are some of these new areas of growth for the country. If we take life sciences, fintech, agrifood, it's very difficult for entrepreneurs to be able to work their way through that. We found examples in other countries. In regenerative medicine in Japan, for example, they have had a separate approach for people who are developing products in those areas, an approach that can bypass the current system to enable people to go through it. It's not meant to be less safe, but the process is so onerous that they know nothing will come out of it.
We've seen some. There's a colorectal scan, I know, that was developed in British Columbia and Alberta. It was developed in 2013, I believe. It was still not allowed in Ontario in 2017, even though it has been given permission in a province. I know that's part of our federal structure, but that's not helpful for people who are trying to develop new businesses at scale with those kinds of regulatory issues.
Fintech is another one. If you think about our banking system, we should be a leader in that area. It's more challenging to be able to do that in Canada than it would be, for example, in Singapore or in the United Kingdom where they call have what they call “regulatory sandboxes” to allow people to try new things.
It's the buildup of regulations over time and not a process to clean house or review. We think it should be done sector by sector. Plus, as we look ahead at some of the new areas where we could be leading the world—I do say that health care is one—we have really quite restrictive processes in place for people to be able to do things.