Industry Committee on Feb. 5th, 2019

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

I have a couple questions, and then I want to drop into your list of recommendations.

Mr. Greer, you mentioned the fact that you have to input data over and over again. Are you familiar with Estonia's digital government model? They are the most advanced in the world in terms of digital government. They have a rule, for example, that you can only ask a question once. You can't re-ask the same question. If you asked me A, B, C, then it's somewhere in our system. No other department has the right to ask that. Would that address something like you're mentioning?

[Ryan Greer]

Certainly the idea that if you provide information at one time to the government and that they're not going to ask you for that information again until it needs to be updated seems like an ideal end point. With the size of our federal government, the challenge is implementing large IT transformations. Privacy and data issues between departments make all of that very difficult, but that principle of fewer touchpoints and common usage of fairly standard information is a desirable end point.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

It's a foundation that they've built their digital government on. You're not allowed to double-ask.

Mr. Greer, I think you'd made another point about the concept of prosperity not being in the mandate. For example—and I've shared this with my colleagues here—look at the regulation of drugs. Canada, the United States, and Europe have in their mandates that they have to make sure that their populations are safe, but they also have to get innovative medicines through. They have that in Europe. They have the word “innovation” again in the FDA for food and drugs in the United States. When you come to Canada, it's just, “Keep us safe.” When you go there and say, “Hey, I have a way to be more prosperous, more innovative”, they say, “Well, good for you.”

Would it be a good idea to write that into the mandate? We talk about true action to change the regulators' actual mandates.

[Ryan Greer]

Yes, absolutely.

I think the ongoing Patented Medicine Prices Review Board regulations are a perfect example of this. The department has come out with regulations. It says that the objective is to lower drug prices. It presents the analysis that underpins that. It went to industry and asked for industry feedback. Industry says they think there will be negative impacts on employment, innovation and investment. They think there will be a lot of problems with what this will mean for the pharmaceutical industry in Canada.

The output from the department is that the original analysis was right. Somewhere along the way there's somebody who's not being told that they need to sit down with industry and try to come together to determine what the real impacts of this will be and not pretend that there won't be these impacts just because we have the social objective of trying to lower drug prices.

That's a perfect example of why embedding innovation and economic growth mandates will empower, encourage and require those officials to actually sit down and determine the true costs of some of these things.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Would you like to add to that?

[Laura Jones]

I think you're on an excellent line there, that overall, the objective has to be to keep Canadians safe and encourage innovation and prosperity at the same time. It has to balance those objectives and find better ways to do that and to create what I think is a culture change that's needed in government along those lines.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

So we should actually write into the regulator's mandate that it's not just about keeping us safe.

At some point.... I can give you an example that I know of, going back to drugs: we don't have pediatric formulations in Canada because we're keeping people safe, but the reality is that we're not keeping our infants safe, because people just say to take a pill and cut it in four and that's good enough because we can't get the pediatric formulations through. We pretend that we're keeping them safe, but we're just keeping things out that might actually be safer in some ways.

Would you be happy to see us write in the mandate, “drive innovation to take responsibility for economic growth and innovation”?

[Corinne Pohlmann]

I was going to say that one of the things we have found where regulatory modernization has been the most effective is political leadership.

If the political leadership writes into the mandate of the officials that they must do this and then keeps them to it, that is the most effective way to get change when it comes to regulation. It has to come from the political level.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Let's look at the other recommendations for change in the regulators game. You've come up with one, a 25% reduction in three years. You'd like that to be mandated by department, including the CRA I suppose?

[Laura Jones]

I'd like to see that across government and that it be reported by department. It would start with a simple count—

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Would each department have this objective, or the government as a whole?

[Laura Jones]

Well, the government as a whole.... You could do it either way. You could do it as the government as a whole and then each department would have to hit the 25%, or you could have some horse-trading within the 25% where it makes sense—

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Cap and trade.

[Laura Jones]

Yes. It may be harder for some departments to get to 25%, but for others that may be an easy target. That would be fine, but the important question is 25% of what—25% of a very comprehensive measure that can't be gamed, or—

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

You mentioned B.C. and which other province?

[Laura Jones]

I would look at B.C. and Manitoba. Those would be the two I would look at.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

B.C. and Manitoba have done this very well, and as you've mentioned before, that's been reflected in your surveys too. If I understand, the reduction of—

[Laura Jones]

Yes, we have less concern about the regulatory burden in B.C. than we have in most other provinces. That's going to go up and down, depending on the government, but that's certainly been where we've been at.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Your one-for-one and moving on to one-for-two—can you elaborate a little bit on that and what you'd like to see specifically?

[Laura Jones]

I think the most successful approach to this has been in British Columbia where they had two-for-one and between 2001 and 2004 they cut by 36%. That created a culture change. There was no longer any need.... After two-for-one hit, the 36% reduction, regulators had to do one-for-one after that, but I said that they're down to 49%. There's no bigger indication to me that you have a culture change within government. The government continues to identify more to reduce—

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

They did two-for-one, then they moved to one-for-one, but they kept going down. Is that what you're saying?

[Laura Jones]

But they kept going down.

Think about what that means. In most cases, regulators are continuing to pile on the rules. In British Columbia, they have continued to find things to cut faster than they are adding. It doesn't mean they're not adding—they are adding—but they've continued to do that. I think that's a very powerful statement about a culture change within government.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Dan Ruimy]

Finally, we'll go to Ms. Caesar-Chavannes.

[Celina Caesar-Chavannes]

Mr. Greer, when there was a question about the price on pollution, you mentioned that the chamber has been advocating for that since 2011. I suspect that is because there are some advantages for businesses to be a part of that green economy, right?