Government Operations committee  Do you mean as a result of the act?

Government Operations committee  Not to my knowledge, no.

Government Operations committee  We are appropriately staffed to carry out our mandate. Is that the question?

Government Operations committee  Yes. On our resource allocation to develop regulations and the red tape reduction, there's no real connection between those things in my mind. We have the resources that we need to carry out our mandate.

Government Operations committee  Yes, we do. Part of the regulatory development is to look at ease of compliance, and we always try to seek measures. We are looking within our department at modernizing as much as we can to move from paper processes to electronic processes. We have a lost and theft reporting requirement under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act where until very recently people were caused to fax in reports.

Government Operations committee  I'll offer a quick perspective. We've obviously been watching what has been happening in other jurisdictions and some of the conversations that are taking place there. When you look at the early implementation of a one-for-one, or more, there's probably more inventory in the regulatory stock in terms of outdated or antiquated regulations.

Government Operations committee  Wherever we're developing regulations, the minimum requirement to achieve the policy objective is our best objective. If there are appropriate measures in place at a provincial level or standards across, whereby we don't need to enter into that space, then we wouldn't enter into that space.

Government Operations committee  Yes, it would. Any new regulations that are brought in require an offset.

Government Operations committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll try to move through this relatively quickly. I am pleased to be here today as part of your review of the Red Tape Reduction Act. My colleague from the Treasury Board Secretariat has given us a great overview of the RTRA. What I hope to do this morning is provide a brief perspective from a regulatory department.

Finance committee  On the first part, it's not foreseen that there would be any additional cost to industry to comply. Really, what these powers are doing is to give more flexible authorities to our inspectors and bring the Food and Drugs Act into line with other acts that you would see, including the Safe Food for Canadians Act and a variety of others within the health portfolio.

Finance committee  Thanks for the opportunity to provide a brief overview of clauses 170 and 171, which deal in particular with the powers of inspection. We work in an increasingly complex world, and technology is evolving at unprecedented speed, but our powers of inspection have not kept up with the pace of those developments.