On Monday, Treasury Board President Tony Clement announced red tape reduction measures that will save small and medium sized businesses $10M. One of the measures will save 15,000 pharmacists a total of $8.7M per year ($580 each). Another measure announced will save $1.2M for 32,000 businesses, a savings of $37.50 each.
The government has been proudly announcing a string of red tape reduction measures, with a website devoted to its Red Tape Reduction Action Plan.
A cornerstone of the Red Tape Reduction Action Plan is the One-for-One rule:
Through the “One-for-One” Rule, the government will reduce the administrative burden in two ways:
- When a new or amended regulation increases the administrative burden on business, regulators will be required to offset â from their existing regulations â an equal amount of administrative burden cost on business.
- It requires regulators to remove a regulation each time they introduce a new regulation that imposes new administrative burden on business.
- Regulators are required to provide offsets within two years of receiving final approval of regulatory changes that impose new administrative burden on business.
- The value of the administrative burden cost savings or cost increases to business will be made public in the Regulatory Impact Analysis Statement when the regulatory change is published in the Canada Gazette.
There has been an in depth series of analyses of the impact of the yet-to-be-proclaimed Canada’s Anti-Spam Law (CASL) published recently by Barry Sookman of McCarthy-Tetrault. I recommend reading the entire series:
- Evaluating the Industry Canada CASL regulations: why they are needed
- Evaluating the Industry Canada CASL regulations: how to assess them
- Evaluating the Industry Canada CASL regulations: family relationships and personal relationships
- Evaluating the Industry Canada CASL regulations: the B2B exception (Part I-SMEs)
- Evaluating the IC CASL regulations: the B2B exception (Part II-Non-business entities)
It appears clear that there will be an overwhelming administrative burden imposed on businesses, hospitals, charities, clubs, schools and others, associated with attempting to comply with CASL.
As Mr. Sookman writes:
CASLâs âban allâ approach to regulating CEMs will inevitably result in not-for-profit entities, educational, charities, and other organizations finding themselves barred from communicating with others electronically. They canât send CEMs without express consent and it will be illegal to send an email or other electronic message to even ask for consent. These inadvertent consequences flow from CASLâs flawed âban allâ structure. When all commercial speech is âbannedâ subject to certain conditions, it is impossible to enumerate or properly craft or fairly develop all of the needed exceptions to prevent truly undesirable consequences; in this case, treating non-business organizations more harshly than business organizations.
There is no good policy reason for treating educational institutions, hospitals, medical providers, charities, and other non-business organizations more onerously than businesses.
It is clear that CASL will  “increase the administrative burden on business”. As such, the Red Tape Reduction Action Plan requires that “regulators will be required to offset â from their existing regulations â an equal amount of administrative burden cost on business.”
Have we seen the “Regulatory Impact Analysis Statement” for CASL? With so many regulatory bodies involved in enforcement of CASL, will each develop its own set of red tape reduction measures?
The intent of anti-spam laws was to increase confidence in electronic commerce. In its implementation, it may do nothing to reduce the the number of emails and phone calls we receive promoting pharmaceuticals, credit score improvements or vacations, while killing the adoption of electronic communications from legitimate organizations and businesses.