8 March 2010
Can the Government Meet the Challenge of Program Review and Ensuring an Efficient Regulatory Approval System.
As Finance Minister Jim Flaherty knows, budgets are never easy. When times are good, a Finance Minister must manage the overwhelming expectations departments and stakeholders have for additional funding. When times are tough – like they are now – these same departments and stakeholders are manning the barricades against funding cuts. With the budget released last week the job for the Finance Minister – now to be joined by the Minister who is to manage contraction of government spending, Stockwell Day – does not get any easier.
For Conservatives, the opportunity to stall the growth of government spending – and to hopefully shrink its size – appeals to those who feel Canadians would benefit from less government, not more. The budget did this in committing to freeze departmental budgets. While the budget did not detail what cuts will be made to ensure Departmental budgets don’t increase, it suffices to say that Deputy Ministers around Ottawa are scratching their heads wondering how they will find the savings Minister Flaherty announced last week.
What these Deputy Ministers know is that finding the levels of savings that the government is calling for will not be easy and some would say it is impossible without affecting the ability of the government to provide the services Canadians expect from it. Time and time again, officials in Ottawa are talking of understaffed programs and their inability to keep up with the workload imposed upon them. Unfortunately, the government’s commitment to reduce red tape and the regulatory burden on business does not do much to ease the burden on departments.
To take just one area of government that will be difficult to make cuts within, we can look at regulatory agencies and departments like Health Canada, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and the Pest Management Regulatory Agency. Each must be looking at the announced budget freezes with exasperation. These regulatory bodies have immense pressure placed on them to manage their regulatory environment without putting undue pressures on the business community working with the regulations. At the same time, officials need to ensure the scientific assessments that must be completed before products like pharmaceuticals, pesticides, and food additives are completed before a product is approved and deemed safe. These officials are already finding it increasingly difficult to complete these reviews within the target timeframe because of both the complexity of the review and the lack of staff with the expertise to complete them. To them, departmental budget freezes mean no help through additional staff is on the horizon.
This is something that should worry all of us. Having the ability to conduct regulatory reviews of products is an important task that the government performs. While the benefits to the public are not always obvious, the government’s ability to perform an efficient and comprehensive regulatory analysis ensures products meet the rigorous standards Canadians expect.
As Finance Minister Flaherty and Treasury Board President Day begin their version of program review, they will know savings will come at a price, and one of those prices may be an efficient regulatory approval system. As good Conservatives, both Ministers may welcome the challenge of finding savings without hurting our regulatory approval system. It will be very interesting to see if Canadians agree with the solutions the Ministers and the government put forward.
