Thank you for the question.
This process was begun a few years ago. The goal was not to eliminate one policy rather than another, but rather to do a spring cleaning, if I may use that expression.
Over the years, more and more rules have been created and there was no clear structure for them. Often, there were problems of consistency, where one rule contradicted another. Some of them were very detailed and intended more for line department officials, whereas others were intended more for deputy ministers. This made it complicated to comply with all of the rules, even for Treasury Board employees, and even more so for the departments that were required to enforce them.
We therefore undertook an exhaustive process. We discussed the type of structure that we wanted and then established the rules that were deemed essential to carry out all tasks. This is how we reduced the number of policies on this list from 180 to 44.