While I appreciate the…

While I appreciate the efforts the Government of Ontario is making to streamline its bureaucracy and reduce duplicative regulation, the scope of changes bundled into Bill 132 is so vast that it is nearly impossible for the general public to be able to provide an informed and meaningful commentary on the bill, particularly in the brief 30-day window provided. A much longer, much more robust consultation period is required for this Bill to be considered the outcome of good governance.

This package of regulatory changes affects over a dozen Ministries and close to 50 separate pieces of legislation. Some of the changes are very minor and may have little regulatory or applied impact, but others are far more substantive and warrant deeper inquiry and time for appropriate, informed public consultation. The supporting materials provided on the ERO site at this time do not constitute an adequate body of information to provide a fully informed context for understanding either the rationale or impacts of the proposed changes.

For example, it is difficult to assess the merits of the recommendation to streamline reporting on waste reduction and resource recovery through a non-governmental not-for-profit, the Resource Productivity and Recovery Authority. While a discussion paper has been provided as background information to support this recommendation, the paper does not discuss or analyze a range of options for waste data management. Rather, it proposes this single solution of privatized reporting and data management through the RPRA without providing a side-by-side comparison of what would be entailed in the Government of Ontario offering this public service as part of its core responsibilities. Certainly, sometimes the private sector can achieve more ambitious outcomes more nimbly than the public sector - for example, when there's good economic incentive to solve problems or provide services - but for a sector like waste management, which should not be subject to the private sector's profiteering or the whims of a boom-or-bust economic cycle, it really should fall to the public sector (government) to be responsible for planning and guiding our approaches to waste reduction.

Meanwhile, reading through the proposed changes to the Pesticides Act one is left to wonder if the sole purpose of these changes isn't, as described in the ERO posting, to remove duplicative processes but rather to scrap a larger committee oversight body (the Ontario Pesticide Advisory Committee) and vest its responsibilities in one single person (the Director)? And yet we are told nothing about who this Director is, what the terms of reference for this officer might be, whose interests they represent, etc. It seems like a fine opportunity to embed a single officer, sympathetic to the chemical industry, to control all discretionary decisions around the applications of cosmetic pesticides in Ontario and that's simply not Better for People - it's dangerous for people, for their health, and for our communities.

Thinking about the proposed changes to the Pesticides Act, but also more generally, while I understand the government's desire to streamline and eliminate duplication, there are good reasons for provinces to retain powers and regulatory oversight for matters of public interest, like environmental protection, separate and apart from any federal regulatory statutes. (In fact, the Ford government is heading to the Supreme Court to make exactly such arguments about the importance of provincial jurisdiction in its fight against the federal carbon pricing regulation.) In Canada, government works as a cooperative federation, with provinces / territories and the federal government endeavouring to cooperate and share regulatory responsibility wherever possible. While it's interesting to note that the Ford government is eager to hand its provincial responsibilities off to the feds, it's also important to consider the vital role that provinces can play in protecting the rights and interests of their citizens. The relationship between federal and provincial jurisdictional power is often a delicate balancing act, but having two levels of power-holders and decision-makers is also an important safeguard that prevents potentially poor decision-making at one level of government from inflicting undue harm on Canadian citizens.

In summary, my overarching comment on Bill 132 is that it's simply trying to pack too many regulatory changes into too large a package, given the timeframe for review and public consultation. Being Better for the People means caring for the well-being of individuals, families and communities, and the ecosystems that support all our lives, and sometimes that means having to invest in providing services, doing hard work, and covering costs that the market will not. The public has a right to due process and to be furnished with the ability to provide informed commentary. The current consultation has fallen far short of the minimum requirements. Proceeding with implementation of this Bill, given the shoddy effort at securing public feedback, would prove this government's commitments to transparency, accountability and good governance to be insincere.