Thank you.
IE Canada serves businesses that depend on the movement of goods across Canada's international borders. We have over 85 years of experience bringing industry and government together for collaborative decision-making.
I'm joined by Keith Mussar, the vice-president of regulatory affairs at IE Canada and a member of Treasury Board's external advisory council on regulatory competitiveness.
A decade ago, I was starting a new role. The VP came out of his office and said something along the lines of “Per my note, let's go decide on our annual goals.” The whole team went into the boardroom. He dismissed the first person, and after the second person spoke, the visibly uncomfortable VP stood up, announced the annual targets and abruptly ended the meeting. The conclusion was decided before the beginning.
Here's the deal. His team had loftier goals and a plan to accomplish them. He could have looked like a hero, but he simply refused to listen.
Many consultations executed by the Government of Canada have the same outcome. The structure of the consultation is perfectly manipulated to ensure that the feedback it receives is exactly what it wants to hear. In social media, we call this an echo chamber. We only follow accounts that reconfirm our biases each and every day.
We will never get to a modernized regulatory environment without engaging the regulated party.
On the American televison drama The West Wing, C.J. Cregg, the press secretary, often laments about “take out the trash” Friday, when unfavourable stories are dumped. She fears that the administration has become too skilled. We notice that there's a substantial spike in formal consultations around December, July and August. Perhaps it's a similar phenomenon.
How does an ineffective regulation enter into force? It is dumped in the summer, presented to like-minded special interest groups for their echo of approval and then presented to industry as their newest piece of red tape to wrap themselves up in.
IE Canada believes it's time to take a new approach.
In 2019 I had the privilege of working with IE Canada on a proposal that would not only eliminate ineffective regulations but propose a structure to ensure that no new unnecessary regulations would be implemented. The proposal is included in our written submission today.
Our proposal is modelled after the U.S.A.'s Border Interagency Executive Council, which was initiated under President Obama and continued under President Trump. Our proposed Canadian interagency border council would be responsible for vetting all existing and proposed regulations that could impact Canada's border. The best part of this proposal is that the regulators would be forced to sit down and have meaningful conversations with the regulated stakeholders.
Industry representatives must have a substantive role and voice at a border council table, with a structure that ensures that the regulators can regulate. Impacted government departments would be forced to justify in writing why they choose to diverge from industry's recommendations. The border council would radically improve Canada's competitiveness while reducing the regulatory cycle and budgetary outlays.
Just like the employees of the uncomfortable VP, industry stakeholders would not only have aligned goals with the government at the border; they would also have the tools and the data to make the goals a reality. Through a collaborative border council, Canada could improve our global competitiveness in an ever-shifting geopolitical world.
Thank you for your time today.