Government Operations Committee on March 10th, 2020

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

So just for TBS alone, it would probably be $2 million, plus, say, a million for benefits and costs and everything else, so about $3 million. So about 12% of the supposed savings are burnt up just overseeing it, just for one department.

Okay.

How much time do I have?

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

You have about 45 seconds.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Great.

Just really quickly, my original question was about how much you are able to do. How much is guided by the legislation? How much is guided by the desire to get regulations cut or reduced? Originally, you said it comes from the department, but I think in an answer to Mr. Green—and I may have heard wrong—you said that it seems to be limited by legislative scope.

Could you just clarify what's holding us back from delivering better services or delivering fewer regulations to businesses? Is it the legislative side or is it just inertia within the government services?

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Once again, while that is a good and legitimate question, I will have to advise the witnesses—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

In the time you took to say that, he could have just simply told us.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

—to perhaps respond in writing, through the clerk, because we're completely out of time at this juncture.

We'll now go to Mr. Drouin for five minutes.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will share my time with my colleague down the aisle.

I have a question with regard to the internal regulations as they relate to procurement. I know the Red Tape Reduction Act covers some parts of procurement, but I'm looking for information. When government is looking to buy, and there's a lot of back and forth between Treasury Board and perhaps PSPC, do we cover that cost? Do we counter those regulations in place? How do we communicate that to businesses?

For example, if we are buying wires for the Government of Canada, there can be a lot of back and forth with Treasury Board. Is that covered under the Red Tape Reduction Act?

[James van Raalte]

It is not. The only way it would be captured is if a regulator had a procurement issue that required oversight from a legal perspective and needed to put regulations in place. Then the administrative burden of that.... The administrative burden of purchasing or of the Government of Canada making purchases from business is not captured under this legislation.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Okay, great.

Thank you. That answers my question.

I'll pass it to my colleague.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Mr. Kusmierczyk.

[Irek Kusmierczyk, Liberal, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair.

You mentioned, Mr. Van Raalte, that there's an inventory of old regulations or outdated regulations, for example, that are often looked at and reviewed, and that's where some of the eliminations or reductions come from.

Is there a situation that you foresee, as this act moves forward and is implemented, in which we're going to be making more and more tough decisions about which regulations to remove? The low-hanging fruit or the brush has been cleared, and we're making more and more difficult decisions about regulations that maybe are legitimate and should be maintained.

[James van Raalte]

I think my colleague from Health Canada had started to address this. Under the legislation, our forecasting right now for the one-for-one rule is that it is sustainable in the medium to long term in terms of its stated purpose—permitting departments to go back through their stock of regulations and net those out should they need to apply administrative burden and new regulations.

The question becomes one of sustainability, if you were to move to a two-to-one rule or a three-to-one rule and place departments or portfolios in a place where they would have to make balancing acts between this safety requirement and this other safety requirement, and which safety requirement is more important than another. That would be a tough balancing act for those departments that have those mandates.

[Irek Kusmierczyk, Liberal, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

I have a question for Mr. Loyst, then. Was there a situation—trying to get more granular—an example where Health Canada had to make a tough call on a regulation on an issue? Or was there a deregulation that was debated internally?

[Greg Loyst]

Do you mean as a result of the act?

[Irek Kusmierczyk, Liberal, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Yes.

[Greg Loyst]

Not to my knowledge, no.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

We'll go on to Madame Vignola. You have five minutes, please.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

We talked about the process earlier, and I was able to get a very short answer.

Let me give you an example using fictional form numbers that, I hope, don't exist in Quebec or in Canada.

If there was a form A-38 in Quebec, and it was completely identical to a federal form, the A-39, could the information in the A-38 form be sent to the federal government?

If this isn't possible at present, what measures should be put in place so that information contained in identical forms—I mentioned a case of duplication—can be sent from one place to another, while complying with data protection laws?

[James van Raalte]

That is a very important question. I think it points to the complexity of different orders of government involved in the regulatory game in Canada, if I can use that word. You used your own caveat about protecting data and privacy as the biggest hurdle.

At a theoretical level, there is nothing that prevents two orders of government from co-operating in terms of reducing regulatory burden. The rubber hits the road when we start peeling back all of the rules around data sharing, around the jurisdiction of those governments, around whether or not form 283 actually captures everything that is needed in form 378 and getting down to what is actually required.

We do have a regulatory co-operation table under the Canada free trade act with all provinces and territories. Canada is one seat at the table. Those are the types of issues we are trying to work through from an intergovernmental process perspective. It takes time.

Everybody has good intentions on regulatory co-operation and reconciliation. We are making good progress. I'm happy to provide some information on that, about where we are going with the provinces and territories, but governments are committed to reducing the duplication effort across the country.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you.

I'd like to know what process avoids duplication of information from one department to another.

[James van Raalte]

That would be a process that culminates in a discussion at Treasury Board. Again, there is the challenge function that my department would exert on other departments about choice of instrument: Have you consulted? Have you consulted with other departments? What are the interaction issues between this regulatory package and another regulatory package? That rests with the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, and eventually providing that advice to Treasury Board ministers.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

I hear you using the conditional. Is better communication a possibility? Is it a process that is already in place or is it just a possibility that could possibly be considered?

[James van Raalte]

I would have used the conditional, because sometimes we miss things.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Okay.

[James van Raalte]

We're not perfect; we're human. Sometimes, even within departments, they actually don't know there's an interaction issue. I can't say it's a perfect process. It is run by human beings, but the processes are in place.