Industry Committee on April 22nd, 2021

[James van Raalte]

Very quickly, it would be on new proposals coming through from a regulatory perspective or if Parks Canada has been involved in any of those regulatory reviews to clean up the regulatory burden.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Thank you very much.

We'll now start our third round of questions. Our first round goes to MP Baldinelli.

You have the floor for five minutes.

[Tony Baldinelli, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to the witnesses for being with us today.

I want to follow up on my colleague's question for Mr. van Raalte. In terms of those regulatory reviews that take place—earlier you mentioned the changes to the building code as an example—how long would a process typically take? How long would it take, in terms of working with the provinces, to do something like that?

[James van Raalte]

Thanks for the question, Madam Chair.

In terms of regulatory co-operation and working with the provinces and territories, it won't surprise anybody if I say “it depends”. It depends on the complexity of the issue, the complexity of the regulatory framework and potentially how divergent the perspectives are between the provinces and territories.

With the building code discussions, momentum had already been built, and they were probably a source of frustration, so those negotiations I believe took a little less than a year. Then the real heavy work begins in terms of truly harmonizing the regulations going forward, and that's the phase of work they're in now.

If I give another example, in terms of the negotiations with the EU over the sunblock issue, again, there was probably a lot of groundwork behind the scenes before we even got involved from a true alignment formalization perspective, but again it's about 12 to 18 months, and then the systems are in place almost immediately.

[Tony Baldinelli, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

Thank you.

I'd like to follow up on the one-for-one rule. How is the calculation of removing a dollar of regulation for every dollar added verified? Is it by an auditor?

[James van Raalte]

No. We verify that ourselves, within the Treasury Board Secretariat. We have a unit with cost-benefit analysis specialists. We are responsible for tracking the compliance with the one-for-one rule and then reporting on that to Parliament.

We have a small handful of economists who work both with departments in validating methodology and giving them advice, but then also performing a challenge function: “You don't quite have this measurement right. You may want to look at this other methodology before we declare that everything is good to go for Treasury Board consideration.”

[Tony Baldinelli, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

Thank you.

Madam Chair, I'm going to go to Mr. Priddle for a quick question.

Going back to some of my notes on our competitiveness study, I have that “Canada's Red Tape Report” indicated that the amount of time spent on regulation by business owners has decreased since 2017. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business said that could be attributable to businesses, small and medium-sized enterprises, being downloaded costs for certain activities, such as consultants and that kind of work.

Mr. Priddle, my understanding in listening to your presentation is that's the type of situation you're facing. Those additional costs and burdens are now being downloaded and you're being asked to seek help from consultants.

[Tim Priddle]

Yes. It's a complicated playing field. Again, within those 18 different programs through which we might be eligible for funding, the application process takes some time. If I were to apply to maybe six of these and do them myself, it would probably be 40 or 50 hours of work to get the applications in.

In trying to operate a business today in the environment we're working in, we are very fortunate. We are blessed to be in a business that's doing well. However, it's still very complicated. Things change every day. I just have no time to dedicate to that.

If I want to access these programs, I have to hire a consultant. There's no choice about it. It's just whether I think that's right for me to do or not. I haven't worked that one out in my own mind yet.

[Tony Baldinelli, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

Thank you.

Quickly, Ms. Waterous, you indicated your gondola project had on first application been denied by Parks Canada, and you're moving forward on a second application.

Typically, how long does that process work with Parks Canada, say from the concept idea to their first decision?

[Jan Waterous]

The first proposal we submitted went into Parks Canada's radio silence box for 18 months, and then we got a letter that said it was denied.

There's never a timeline that's given, other than in all our meetings we're shown regulatory charts, paths to approval, and told that each path can take anywhere from a year and half to three years. If you add all of that up, it's five, six, seven years, something like that—perhaps longer.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Thank you so much.

I apologize; my timelines are tighter.

[Tony Baldinelli, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Thank you, MP Baldinelli.

We'll now go to MP Lambropoulos. You have five minutes.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'd like to thank all of our witnesses for being with us here today. My first question is going to Mr. van Raalte.

“Canada's Red Tape Report” found that business owners have spent less time complying with regulations since 2017. I am wondering if you could speak a little to some of the measures that have been put in place for cutting red tape, which our government has had since 2015.

What do you think are the reasons for less time being spent on complying with regulations since 2017?

[James van Raalte]

Broadly, the government has introduced a series of regulatory modernization initiatives that have attempted to both address administrative burden and promote economic growth and innovation. I've talked a bit about the regulatory reviews and about regulatory co-operation.

In budget 2019, we also had what I referred to in my opening remarks as what we hope will be an annual regulatory modernization bill, which is intended to clean up a potential backlog of small, consensus-based regulatory irritants. That can help streamline reducing the administrative burden. We hope to be introducing a second piece of legislation this session, continuing that tradition.

It is about continuous improvement. It's also about having a focus on ridding the system of that unnecessary administrative burden.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you.

The Canadian Federation of Independent Business said that the decrease could be because of certain cuts to red tape the government has put in place, but it could also be due to employing a third party to deal with this regulatory burden. It obviously leads to increases in costs to small and medium-sized businesses.

Would you agree that this is part of the reason, or would you argue that it's really because of the government's efforts that less time is spent right now on the regulatory process?

[James van Raalte]

I'm not aware of any system-wide efforts by either industry or consulting companies to address the administrative burden. I think Mr. Priddle—I don't want to put words in his mouth—has talked about applying for government programming, but that's very different from some sort of third party effort to address the administrative burden.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you. My next question is for Ms. Tiessen.

You spoke a lot about how the Competition Bureau is unequipped to deal with certain competition issues that arise in Canada, and that it doesn't necessarily have the power to do what it needs to do to ensure that competition is upheld and businesses have a chance here.

You also said that the administrative penalties are becoming like “the cost of doing business” for a lot of these bigger players. I understand what you meant by that, but I would like you to tell us what you think penalties should be and what the Competition Bureau should be allowed to impose when these things happen.

[Kaylie Tiessen]

Our recommendations for now are all about taking a look at what the administrative penalties are and assessing what might be a better way. Could it be something like a percentage of revenue instead of a straight $10-million penalty, which for a large corporation is simply the cost of doing business? Could it be a percentage of market cap? There are lots of different ways to go about it. At this point, we're saying we need to have a review of what those administrative penalties are.

The other thing is that we need to make sure there are actually the teeth there to enforce it and make sure companies are paying those administrative penalties. It's not always the case that this is enforced.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you very much.

With 30 seconds, I'll cede my time to the next speaker.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Sherry Romanado]

Thank you so much.

Our next round goes to MP Lemire.

You have the floor for two and a half minutes.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Since this is the last time I will speak, I would like to show my solidarity to Mr. van Raalte in the context of what he is going through. Indeed, forestry is a very important business and there is work to be done to better support our forestry entrepreneurs.

I would like to talk about procurement contracts with the representatives of the Fédération des chambres de commerce du Québec. Doing business with the Government of Canada offers great opportunities for Quebec businesses. However, offering goods and services to the federal government can mean running into laws, regulations, agreements, policies, directives, procedures and guidelines, as well as challenge processes.

In order to promote business competitiveness, how could the federal government reduce this administrative and regulatory burden?

[Philippe Noël]

I will let my colleague, Mr. Lavigne, answer this question.

[Mathieu Lavigne]

That is a good question. Thank you for that.

We are part of the Federal Government Supplier Advisory Committee. So it's really an issue that we're looking at very seriously. There are a lot of opportunities, as you say, for businesses to become federal government suppliers. However, the big problem we have is that there is a lack of awareness of the opportunities that exist and the ways to proceed. They're not communicated to businesses. It is somewhat the same thing for trade agreements, as was mentioned earlier.

We know that the federal government is working on things that would improve this, but for us, the key is that communication be proactive. You have to reach out to businesses to let them know what the opportunities are and how they can register as suppliers. There really needs to be an effort to reach out to people, rather than just waiting for them to apply to be suppliers.

[Philippe Noël]

Business opportunities in the federal government are really unknown to companies. You hear it a lot about procurement contracts.

Even granting criteria should perhaps stimulate innovation more, as well as environmental criteria. This would give our Quebec companies a chance to have better access to federal contracts.