Government Operations Committee on Dec. 2nd, 2014

[Kendal Weber]

I'm not aware of the process.

[Stewart Lindale]

No, we're not aware of the process at this point.

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

It is under section 11 of the bill.

Earlier, M. Albas mentioned the Gazette, which seems to provide for a consultation process that specifically allows a response.

Do you believe the consultation process should be a part of the bill? Should it be integrated into the bill to find out what business and the population think of it?

[Mike Beale]

I am not sure I understand your question.

The bill goes through Parliament, and Parliament will decide on the exact content of the bill. After that, in terms of the regulatory process we will follow the regulatory process as already set out in the law. It indicates, for example, that the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, which is one of our major pieces of legislation, sets out processes for going through Canada Gazette I and Canada Gazette II.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

I now give the floor to Mr. Maguire, for five minutes.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

I want to offer my thanks to you as presenters for being here today.

There are a number of questions I want to ask and some of them came out of the presentations from the last panellists.

Mr. Aylward indicated that he didn't support this particular bill and he gave a number of examples that I felt were dealing with health inspection issues and health issues in those areas. As you pointed out, Ms. Weber, they are completely exempt from this bill and not to be a part of it. I support the bill because those types of areas are not to be affected by the bill, health and safety in particular. I was pleased to see that the Canadian Federation of Independent Business supports necessary regulations, which is a part of this bill.

I've seen in Manitoba, where I come from, a number of situations where burdensome regulations have almost killed industries in our province. I think that it's important to make sure that this is taken into consideration when any of these changes are made. I noted that they indicated there are $30 billion in savings in this area if we look at red tape reduction. I'm not indicating that they can all be reduced, but that was their number. I think that's pretty significant given that it's 5% of Canada's debt in that area.

There is a move, I believe, that's needed to make sure that we do everything we can to be responsible about not putting a greater load on areas of small business and industries, particularly with small businesses. I know in Manitoba it's about 82% of the economy of the province.

With these two things I would ask for your comments again in regard to the issues of health and inspections, and in regard to impacts on the environment. I'll ask both Ms. Weber and Mr. Beale if that's part of the reason they support the bill, because of this area of protection of the health and safety issues.

[Kendal Weber]

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 back, as Mr. Beale has mentioned, at the regulations that we have in place. We look for opportunities where industry or health and safety may have evolved and where we can reduce that burden.

I'll give you an example. Our food and drug regulations have been in place for over 50 years. Some of the components of that require maintaining hard copies of documents for several years. We've been approached by some industry members who asked if they could move to electronic systems, perhaps keeping paper copies for maybe two or three years, rather than 10 to 15, and then putting the remainder on the electronic version. That can be a reduction in the administrative burden in that industry. While it is a health and safety regulation, it is reducing the cost to industry on administration, but in no way compromises health and safety.

[Mike Beale]

Another example I could give is in our environmental emergency regulations. We had a requirement for all regulators to report annually on their contact information. We looked at that and we felt that some of these regulators are more, in a sense, at risk than others. We kept that annual requirement for what we considered high-risk regulators, but for low-risk regulators we moved that to five years. It's the way we were able to get the same amount of information without endangering the environment.

[Larry Maguire, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

Thanks. I'll take that as a correction on my behalf as well. Protection is the word I should have used, as opposed to exempt.

I just wanted to close by saying that in regard to the Fisheries Act, which my colleague from the Liberal Party brought up, through regulatory amendments Fisheries and Oceans Canada is already part of that environment. It has already provided fisheries with over $150,000 in administrative burden relief by eliminating rules that require fishers to identify their fishing gear and vessels by using marking devices supplied by the regulators, the department. That's just one area where duplication can certainly be an administrative burden.

I just wanted to see if you have any comments in regard to the comment made by the CFIB in regard to the fact that political leadership was one of the three areas they felt needed to be included in this and to take a lead on it, as opposed to what I heard one of the other presenters say, that regulators should be the ones in charge of the regulations as well. I do know that the people in the departments and that sort of thing are going to have to be the ones who will take a look at some of these issues as well and deal with the regulations.

Could you comment on how important it is to have political leadership in moving these issues forward as well for savings for Canadians?

[Mike Beale]

Well, our system works as a parliamentary democracy with the role of government and the role of ministers. As public servants, our role is to administer the laws and the regulations as set by government. That's the framework within which we operate.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Thank you, Mr. Maguire.

Mr. Byrne, for five minutes.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

In the deliberations leading up to the drafting of the bill and its tabling before Parliament, would I be able to ask either of the witnesses, those appearing before us from the two departments, if they had an opportunity to participate in an interdepartmental or cross-government exploration of the issue at hand and become familiar with not just their own departmental issues but the regulatory circumstances from across departments?

[Kendal Weber]

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, if you will, different irritants that small business, industry, health care professionals, patients, and caregivers said are concerns with the different regulations in place.

With that, the Treasury Board has advanced guidance to departments on how these different measures can be implemented. Then we've also been engaged in interdepartmental discussions.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

Thank you very much.

The President of the Treasury Board appeared before committee and said that there were approximately 1,500 regulations on the books that would be subject to intervention by this particular act. I guess that's a funny way to put it, but those would be eligible to be reviewed and eliminated by the act. He did say that there were 19 regulations thus far in the last two and a half years that have been impacted accordingly.

Do each of your departments or agencies have an inventory of redundant regulations that you may look at, that are potentially still targets?

Ms. Weber.

[Kendal Weber]

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 an existing regulation, we look at the administrative burden and how that can be reduced. That balance can be carried forward, as I mentioned earlier.

The second component is if a new title is introduced, a new regulatory framework. In Health Canada that doesn't happen often, so we don't actually have new titles that are added. But once a new title is added, it's at that point that a regulatory framework has to be removed within the two-year period. As I mentioned earlier, that has to be across the portfolio.

In the two-year forward plan—and we actually do forward planning that goes beyond that—we look at new regulatory amendments that may increase or reduce burden, and then also new titles, and then from that is the requirement to look for a repeal. It's not that it happens very quickly or overnight.

That's the process that we follow.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

Mr. Beale, do you have anything further to add?

[Mike Beale]

Our forward regulatory plan sets out our proposals with respect to removing existing regulations. There are a couple of repeals that are outlined there and some consolidations that are mentioned.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

In essence, this is not something that's going to shake the ground immeasurably, catastrophically, any time soon. This is a very slow, very deliberate, process that's going to result in regulatory improvements over the course of time, but it's not necessarily something that's going to whitewash the regulatory process. Would that be a fair categorization to make?

[Kendal Weber]

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 implemented that small business lens and that administrative burden lens as we develop our regulations. I think we've heard from stakeholders that they are aware that we are more mindful not only of the administrative burden in our regulatory development, but also in the development of our guidance documents and also our operations. Whether that is taking a phone call and not transferring a stakeholder to another part of the department 16 times, there has been a significant culture change but a regulatory process does take 18 to 24 months.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

Finally....

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

Your time is up.

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

Thanks very much for your answers. I appreciate it.

[The Chair, NDP, Pierre-Luc Dusseault]

You will no doubt have an other opportunity to ask your question.

Ms. Day, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Thank you.

My questions pertain to the bill.

In the bill's preamble, it says the following: “whereas the Government of Canada recognizes the importance of being transparent with regard to the implementation of the one-for-one rule“.

Was the notion of transparency defined for you?

[Kendal Weber]

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 being more transparent about the decisions we make with respect to regulatory decisions. The forward regulatory plan is just one component of that. Putting that up with a two-year forward plan gives stakeholders and industry a heads up about which regulations will be coming, allowing for predictability and for planning.