Overactive regulators tie citizens in red tape
TheStar.com – Opinion/Commentary – Three public policy specialists explain why regulations are needed and how to control the proliferation of rules, constraints and paperwork.
Jun 12 2014. By Carol Goar, Star Columnist
Every election produces a spate of promises to cut red tape, reduce the paper burden and streamline government.
Candidates like them because they cost nothing. Voters like them because they offer relief from irksome rules, regulatory requirements and administrative procedures.
In the aftermath of Thursday’s vote, Ontarians can expect a flurry of hacking and discarding. But it won’t solve the problem, say three public policy specialists who have just completed an exhaustive study of 50 years of regulation in Canada.
The real issue isn’t the number of regulations, they argue. It is that so many of them are ineffective or ill-conceived. The remedy isn’t a brief housecleaning blitz; it is developing workable rules in the first place.
Even if they wanted to, the analysts added, politicians couldn’t do what they’re promising. Their predecessors delegated regulatory authority to so many agencies — public boards and commissions, private corporations, professional colleges, industry associations and legislative watchdogs — that control has slipped out government hands.
The three authors, Bruce Doern of Carleton University, Richard Schultz of McGill University and Michael Prince of the University of Victoria, share the politicians’ desire to loosen the current snarl of regulations, which put a chokehold on democracy and erode public confidence in the ability of governments to act in the public interest. But a scythe won’t do the job.
Their book, Rules and Unruliness: Canadian Regulatory Democracy, Governance, Capitalism and Welfarism, is not an easy read. It is targeted at academics and bureaucrats. The language is dense. The price — listed at $100 — is prohibitive.
But its main themes are accessible and its message matters.
The authors begin by reminding readers why regulations, which they define as “rules of behaviour backed by the sanctions of the state,” are necessary. They keep people safe, maintain the integrity of the financial markets, level the playing field for businesses, protect consumers, spell out who does what in emergencies and support the rule of law.
Next they demonstrate what happens when regulatory oversight is missing or weak: the global financial meltdown of 2008, the disarray at the Fukushima nuclear plant after the 2011 tsunami, the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.
Canada has had no such breakdown, they concede, making it look like “a bastion of peace, order and good government.” But self-congratulation would be a mistake, they warn. “Canada has its own regulatory unruliness.” They cite the listeriosis outbreak at Maple Leaf Foods in Toronto, the E. coli outbreak at an Alberta slaughterhouse, last summer’s railway disaster in Lac-Mégantic and the absence of clear rules on the disclosure of public documents, the use of closure and the grounds for proroguing Parliament.
They spend the rest of the book examining what has gone wrong over the last century and what today’s policy-makers can realistically do about it.
The primary problem is that too many players — Ottawa, the provinces, the courts, tribunals, administrative agencies, business and professional bodies — are making rules with no inventory of what already exists and no concern about the domino effect of adding another load of regulations. This results in a bewildering maze of often-conflicting regulations.
A related problem is that each new government layers its regulations onto those of the previous administration, making for a clash of ideologies and agendas.
A further complication is that cost-cutting governments have entrusted corporations — pharmaceutical firms, for instance — with responsibility to ensure that their products are safe. All Ottawa does is approve the test results they submit.
Finally, there’s politics. If the regulatory agency doesn’t do what the party in power wants, it will override it. If a law is inconvenient, the minister will rewrite it. If a watchdog agency gets in the government’s way, the prime minister will appoint a docile new commissioner. If scientific or statistical evidence undermines the rationale for a policy, the government will muzzle public servants.
The authors don’t have an instant remedy. What is needed, they maintain, is ongoing discipline to control the proliferation of rules; the intelligence to make sure they mesh; the willingness to bring the public into the process; and the resolve to keep the process fair and non-partisan.
That’s a tall order — too ambitious for vote-hungry politicians. What they want is an easy campaign pledge they can fulfill, forget and revive in four years’s time.
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