Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak in support of Bill C-84. This bill is about improving the regulatory process to the benefit of all Canadians.
The limitations and particularly the delays created in the existing system result in hidden but very real costs to all Canadians. These are in the form of increased expenditures of revenues spent in enforcing outdated and inappropriate regulations and in reducing competitiveness in the global marketplace.
The reforms proposed in the new regulations act will improve the regulatory system without in any way sacrificing its basic objectives. The government's improved capacity to update regulatory standards faster will promote the public interest by ensuring that health and safety standards are current and take into account evolving technologies.
I would like to spend a few moments now dealing with the provision of Bill C-84 which deals with incorporation by reference. This is incorporation by reference of international standards and other material into regulations. This is an important element in achieving the objectives of our regulatory reform.
First, it is important to understand that these provisions do not create a new regulatory technique. Incorporation by reference is a legal technique that is currently being widely used by governments in Canada. It is a legal technique whose legitimacy has been recognized by the Supreme Court of Canada. It is a legal technique that is widely employed in Europe and has been advocated by the Standards Council of Canada and many international bodies, including the International Standards Organization of Geneva.
Incorporation of materials into regulations particularly as they are amended from time to time is an important way for government to promote the goals of international and interprovincial harmonization of regulatory standards. I want to stress that such harmonization does not mean that Canadian standards will be lowered. In many cases the standards adopted will be higher.
Reliance on the expertise and timeliness of international and interprovincial standards writing organizations whose material is typically incorporated on this basis is of significant value in promoting Canadian competitiveness, particularly in the context of rapid technological change. The usefulness of this technique in promoting Canadian competitiveness was recognized in the 1993 report of the finance subcommittee on regulations and competitiveness.
The provisions of the new legislation, which authorize departments with regulatory power to develop and revise documents incorporated by reference, also provide the important opportunity to quickly revise and improve regulations. This form of incorporation is limited to documents that are essentially technical and the rules of conduct on substance, established by the departments, remain subject to the entire regulatory process.
I stress once again that, in this area, we will not be amending the legislation in use, we will be codifying and clarifying. It has existed for years, and the new legislation simply incorporates the current practice.
However, we are proposing a significant improvement to this practice, because the provisions of the new Regulations Act establish the express statutory requirement for departments with regulatory power to ensure the accessibility of the documents incorporated.
To ensure effective parliamentary control over the technical standards incorporated, the new Regulations Act provides that the Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations be supplied ex officio with all the regulations.
Consequently, this committee could at any time call for, revise and comment on the regulations into which documents have been incorporated and by so doing review the documents in question. The documents, which are periodically revised, are made available in their form at the time of the request.
Like the rest of the new regulations act, provisions relating to incorporation by reference strike what we believe to be the right balance between the need to streamline and speed up the regulatory process and the objectives of ensuring the legality and accessibility of regulations and providing necessary oversight by Parliament.
The regulatory process is already overburdened. We cannot afford to bring into the process documents that are not currently subject to it. The bill will facilitate use of a legitimate technique that offers opportunities for achieving the flexibility we need without sacrificing legality, accessibility, or parliamentary accountability. For those reasons, I urge the committee to review the bill and I urge the House to ultimately pass the bill.