PUBLICATION:
National Post
DATE:
2003.06.24
EDITION: National
SECTION:
Editorials
PAGE:
A19
SOURCE:
National Post
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Power
to slow regulatory flood
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The
scope and reach of government regulations is staggering. Almost every aspect of
our daily lives -- from the type of threads permitted in seatbelts (and the
number required per square centimetre) to the television channels we may watch
to the size of holes in baby bottle nipples -- is governed by a federal or
provincial regulation. Ottawa alone adds approximately 1,200 new regulations
annually, running to more than 5,000 pages, and almost none are ever brought
before the House of Commons for review by Canadians' democratically elected
representatives. That's an average of nearly four new 3 1/2-page regulations
each and every day. Many are merely proclaimed by Cabinet without scrutiny by
Parliament -- until now.
Before
heading into summer recess, the Senate last week passed Bill C-205, a private
member's bill introduced by Gurmant Grewal, a Canadian Alliance MP from Surrey,
B.C. The bill establishes a joint Commons-Senate committee with the power to
review and even revoke unnecessary, intrusive or confusing rules. Not just
Cabinet-decreed regulations are covered, but also those promulgated by a myriad
of government agencies, such as the Canadian Radio-television and
Telecommunications Commission, the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority,
the Canadian Dairy Commission, even the federal firearms registry and Transport
Canada. While this is at least the 11th attempt in the past two decades to tame
the regulatory dragon -- or at least permit MPs and senators some oversight of
the regulatory process -- Mr. Grewal's was the first successful bid, thanks
largely to changes in the rules governing private members bills; rules that make
all such bills votable and reduce the number of procedural games the government
may play to block their passage.
An
estimated 640,000 public sector workers in Canada -- federal, provincial and
municipal -- are employed full-time in drafting and enforcing regulations,
according to the Treasury Board. That's nearly one-in-five government, hospital,
municipal or school board employees. According to the Canadian Chamber of
Commerce, at least 300,000 private sector workers (nearly 3% of the private
workforce) are kept busy complying with the more than one million active federal
and provincial regulations. Mr. Grewal estimates that 80% of federal rule-making
is now done through undemocratic regulation; only 20% originates with
Parliament. Regulation is a powerful symptom of Canada's growing democracy
deficit.
And
it is expensive for Canadian consumers, too. Federal regulation alone is
estimated to added $60-billion annually to the cost of goods and services. The
cost to the average family of four is nearly $6,500 a year, just from Ottawa's
regulatory mania. Add in the provinces' and local governments' fetishes for
decrees on workplace ladder-rung widths and lawn-pesticide spraying hours, and
the total bill is nearer $12,000. That is almost as much as the average
working-class family pays in taxes each year to the three levels of government.
Regulation is a hidden form of double taxation -- make government policy without
recourse to any legislature, then make businesses pass the compliance costs on
to their customers in the form of higher prices, rather than charging a tax for
the policy upfront.
Most
new regulations don't even live up to the regulations that are supposed to
govern their creation and implementation. Four years ago, a Fraser Institute
study found that nearly two-thirds of new federal regulations were proclaimed
without a cost-benefit analysis -- a violation of Treasury Board rules. Nothing
has changed since. For instance, while the Liberal government claims it has
cost-benefit analyses for its outrageous $1-billion firearms registry, it has
never released them, causing opposition members to wonder if the studies contain
all the necessary calculations, or whether they have been completed at all.
Governments'
increasing reliance on regulation rather than legislation is unfortunately only
one example of the decline of Canadian democracy. Of the more than $180-billion
Ottawa spends each year, just over $50-billion (or not quite one-third) is
brought before the Commons for approval. The bulk is statutory spending
authorized by legislation passed previously, often a decade or more in the past.
Judges, too, each year add to the number of laws they make from the bench, over
the heads of parliamentarians and provincial legislators. And in just the past
decade, Ottawa has handed unaccountable federal foundations -- such as the
Canadian Foundation for Sustainable Development Technology, the Canadian
Foundation for Innovation and the Canadian Millennium Scholarship Foundation --
more than $7-billion in endowments, even though these organizations' boards are
not appointed by Cabinet, their budgets are not approved by Parliament and their
activities are not subject to review by the Auditor-General or the Information
Commissioner.
Acquiring for the Commons-Senate regulations committee the power to overturn the most egregious regulations will not immediately reverse the trend away from democratic accountability in Canada, but it is a crucial first step.