How the President of the Treasury Board can fuel recovery

After over a year-and-a-half of lockdowns and sacrifice, Canadians are seeing the benefits of their efforts to stop COVID-19. The pandemic is not over, but we can now look beyond COVID to plan for our future. Now, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce is writing “mandate letters” to members of the Cabinet with policy priorities that will support growth of the Canadian economy.

The COVID-19 pandemic has only reinforced the impacts of unnecessary regulation on Canadian businesses that hinder their economic potential. While regulation is important for health and safety, unnecessary requirements continue to be imposed on businesses.

The President of the Treasury Board should:

• Work with other departments and regulators to apply a balanced and flexible approach to administering and enforcing regulatory requirements. Given the business disruption caused by the pandemic, all new non-essential regulatory processes should be paused.

• Review the regulatory process to ensure business’s competitiveness in a post-pandemic landscape.

• Revitalize the Canada-United States Regulatory Cooperation Council by launching a stakeholder consultation to reset priorities. Early consideration should be given to regulatory cooperation on plastics, cyber certification, appliances, and small modular reactors.

To see all 21 of our mandate letters to ministers, click here.