Mr. Speaker, I move that Bill C-25, the new regulations act, be approved in principle.
Let me say how pleased we are to have had the benefit of prestudy by a subcommittee of the government operations committee in the last session. Even though the subcommittee's hearings were interrupted by the prorogation, the input we received has allowed us to make some slight technical modifications to the bill that result in an overall improvement without altering the substance of the bill. We are very much appreciative of the assistance provided by the government operations subcommittee and the members of the Standing Joint Committee on the Scrutiny of Regulations who sat on the subcommittee.
Regulatory reform continues to be an area of broad interest to Canadians. There are many avenues which the government is pursuing in a way to improve the way it regulates. The new regulations act offers important improvements to the Canadian system of regulation established almost a quarter of a century ago by the Statutory Instruments Act. This act will streamline the regulatory process and reduce delays in the current process by which regulations are made at the federal level in Canada. This will allow regulations to be changed more readily to respond to new circumstances and needs.
Although these reforms were announced as part of this government's broader efforts toward building a more innovative economy and improving jobs and growth, the problems created by the current regulatory process have been identified many times during the past few years. Calls for changes have been most recently heard in the course of the public consultations that took place during the government wide regulatory review in 1992 and 1993. As well, the reforms aim to modernize and reform the legal framework for regulation making at the federal level.
The Statutory Instruments Act was designed for an earlier era of regulation. It is complex, cumbersome, slow and overburdened and this imposes a real cost to all Canadians. Outdated and inappropriate regulatory schemes can impact negatively on respect for law, competitiveness and economic growth as well as upon the working relations of the regulated private sector and government regulators.
Outdated regulatory schemes that are not well tailored to changing circumstances increase the government costs of obtaining compliance. Delays in modernizing and improving regulatory schemes reduce the ability of government to respond to new developments in the fields of health, safety, the environment, international trade and federal-provincial relations.
The negative impact of a slow and cumbersome regulatory process is also experienced by Canadian businesses because of outdated and inappropriate regulations that tend to reduce competitiveness and economic growth, generally speaking.
The limitations and the delays that are created by the existing regulation making system result in hidden, but very real, costs to all Canadians in the form of increased expenditure of revenues spent in enforcing outdated and inappropriate regulations and reduced competitiveness in the global marketplace.
No one could seriously dispute that the current regulatory process must be reformed in order to keep pace with the current realities of regulation in the 1990s and into the 21st century. Bill C-25 will improve the regulatory process for the benefit of all Canadians. At the same time, it must be borne in mind that reform of the Statutory Instruments Act calls for a careful balancing of different interests.
In the new act, the objectives of streamlining, simplifying and expediting the regulation making process are achieved without compromising equally important goals of ensuring adequate opportunity for notice, public comment and effective oversight by Parliament of the creation of binding, subordinate legislation.
It is important, therefore, to emphasize that the reforms being proposed in the regulations act are largely technical improvements that would not radically alter the existing process. Rather, they will clarify existing legal uncertainties that give rise to debate and delay, simplify steps where appropriate and modernize the process.
I would like to emphasize that the new regulations act will preserve and strengthen the fundamental principles and objectives of the Statutory Instruments Act, which provides legal safeguards necessary in making binding laws such as regulations.
These objectives include ensuring the legality, transparency and accessibility of regulations and providing a meaningful opportunity for parliamentary oversight of the executive in the exercise of this law making power.
The new act will improve the capacity of government to respond quickly and effectively to public concerns as well as to changing rapidly for the circumstances of the global economy. It will also reduce the overall volume of regulations that go through the system and provide an expedited process, where appropriate, and allow for a more effective use of incorporation by reference. It will create a framework for achieving important administrative improvements in the way government departments handle regulation making as well.
By facilitating amendment or replacing an outdated regulatory scheme, regulating departments will be better placed to implement new ideas about how to regulate more effectively, and at a lower cost, to all Canadians.
The reforms found in Bill C-25 will create a new regulations act that will be better tailored to the contemporary regulatory climate.
I would like to briefly outline some of the key elements of reform that are found in this bill. They are a simpler, more principled definition of regulation and other plain language improvements; an appropriate view of different classes of documents, including an expedited process for documents that do not require legal review; a revised exemption power that will now be subject to an express public interest consideration; a codification and clarification of the law by expressly authorizing the incorporation by reference of international and other standards into regulations, subject to an express accessibility requirement; a modernized process that allows for the creation of an electronic registry of regulations; and finally, maintenance for government accountability for regulations through parliamentary scrutiny.
The new regulations act will relieve the system of documents that do not need to be subject to the regulatory process or at least to the whole process, either because they are not substantive or truly regulatory in the sense of establishing generally binding rules of conduct, or because their legality and accessibility are assured in some other way. This will allow the attention as well as the resources of the regulatory process and of the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations to be focused on the important legal instruments that warrant that attention.
With respect to the provisions on incorporation by reference, it is important to understand that they do not create a new regulatory technique. They merely clarify and codify a legal technique that is currently being widely used across Canada, and whose legitimacy has been recognized by the Supreme Court of Canada. This technique is widely employed in Europe and has been advocated by the Standards Council of Canada and many international bodies, including the International Standards Organization in Geneva.
Incorporation of standards into regulations, particularly as they are amended from time to time, is an important way for government to promote the goals of international and intergovernmental harmonization of regulatory standards. Reliance on the expertise and timeliness of international and interprovincial standards writing organizations is of significant value in promoting Canadian competitiveness, particularly in contexts 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.
I am confident that ministers and cabinet can be relied on to ensure that incorporation by reference of standards that exist as of a certain date or as amended from time to time will be employed in appropriate circumstances and that the bodies creating the standards are expert and reliable such that Canadians will be satisfied with the standards that are being adopted.
While these provisions on incorporation by reference simply reflect the current law and practice, I would like to draw members' attention to the fact that we are also proposing a significant improvement over the current practice in that the new regulations act would create an expressed statutory duty on regulating departments to ensure that incorporated materials are accessible.
I also want to emphasize that the improvements offered by Bill C-25 will not be at the cost of the equally important objectives of the regulatory process, including necessary parliamentary review of regulations. The new act will not only preserve but strengthen the role currently played by the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations by providing that all regulations that meet the new simplified but principled definition of regulations will stand permanently referred to that committee, together will all other documents that are required to be registered. The standing joint committee will be free at any time to call for review and
comment on regulations that incorporate materials, and in so doing will have access as well to the incorporated material. The structure of the current Statutory Instruments Act limits the instruments that are referred to the standing joint committee in a way that the proposed act will not do.
Clear cost savings and environmental benefits will result from the proposed electronic registry with a reduced reliance on paper. The registry will also ultimately provide regulated communities, interest groups and the public generally with quicker and more direct means of consultation and commentary on proposed regulatory changes.
We are well aware that not all Canadians are computer literate yet and that access to laws published in paper form will continue to be the method of choice for many Canadians. Therefore, I would like to emphasize that the proposed electronic system is intended to supplement and not replace the existing system of paper, publication and access. Regulations will continue to be widely available in paper format. They will be published in the Canada Gazette which is accessible through local libraries and by subscription. Under the act paper copies can also be requested from the Office of the Clerk of the Privy Council or from the departments responsible for the regulations.
The regulatory process provided for in the Statutory Instruments Act is too complex and burdensome to be able to keep pace with the changing regulatory needs. The overall effect of the reforms contained in Bill C-25 will be less stress on the existing system by reducing the number and volume of regulations subject to the general regulatory process while preserving the important value embodied in the original scheme.
The result will be a system that is more responsive and efficient, which will be in a better position to give the federal government a renewal that modernizes the existing regulatory process and put in place regulatory schemes that better address the need and the interests of Canadians, both the general public and the regulated communities.