Evidence of meeting #4 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was standard.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Vice-President, Strategy, Standards Council of Canada
For voluntary standards in the areas, the departments will decide which standards. There are a variety of standards. They'll decide which standards they will incorporate into their regulations, into their own regulatory certification programs.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
Of the standards that you are developing and you're overseeing, how many move into regulations? How many become forced regulations, and how many do not?
Vice-President, Strategy, Standards Council of Canada
A minority of voluntary standards end up in a regulatory framework. At the federal level, our count in May 2015 was approximately 1,400 different voluntary standards were incorporated into federal regulations. At the provincial level, approximately 4,000 different standards were incorporated into provincial and territorial regulations.
That does not include the national model codes, like the national building code or the fire code, which are different instruments. You would find thousands of standards incorporated in them.
Liberal
Vice-President, Strategy, Standards Council of Canada
They're not covered by us. That's the National Research Council and the Canadian Codes Centre.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
In some of your opportunities in advising, you said there's a balance between needing to develop a Canadian standard, or is there one off the shelf from ISO or something like that? Do you make the decision to guide these eight standards organizations underneath you? Do they have to take your guidance or can they make that decision themselves?
Vice-President, Strategy, Standards Council of Canada
It is part of their accreditation. They make those decisions on behalf of the stakeholders that are interested in standards. We facilitate the process, and we make sure they abide by the process that we've laid out for them.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
It's for them to decide if they want to develop a Canadian standard or adopt one.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
The trend in developing their own or adopting international.
Vice-President, Strategy, Standards Council of Canada
The overwhelming majority of standards are being developed internationally. Very few new standards are being developed and maintained domestically. We see a lot of activity to maintain the Canadian electrical code, the plumbing code, or...the legacy items.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
These are legacy items, and we're just struggling to keep them up to date.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
You mentioned the Americans will update theirs and then suddenly we're behind again.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
In that instance, would you be in a position to say.... You have UL, ULC, CSA, and they have UL underwriters. Could you say there's an argument people make not to lose sovereignty by just saying they'll snap onto theirs?
Vice-President, Strategy, Standards Council of Canada
The argument about sovereignty is an important one, and we want to ensure that, if we join forces with U.S. stakeholders, Canadians don't get lost in this. That's the reason we tried those three pilot projects, to see how we could make it work. The results were pretty impressive. Canadians were able to hold their own and were able to get their critical elements or ideas into the standards.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
Into the American standards, so when the Americans were developing theirs, they would say they were from Canada and wanted to make sure they covered this point, and the American standards developers were listening.
Vice-President, Strategy, Standards Council of Canada
Yes, absolutely. That's how we did it in terms of joint standards between Canada and the U.S. Canadians didn't lose out. They were able to get what they needed out of the process.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
Your stakeholders are not worried if we start internationalizing our standards. Would they see this as a good or a bad thing?
Vice-President, Strategy, Standards Council of Canada
Some stakeholders will always be worried. That's a question we need to address with them, but the facts are there. We believe we're pretty good at this. If we're involved internationally, we're okay.
Liberal
Liberal
