Article published in The Financial Post, July 5, 2001, p. C-15
Thank God! Parliament is in recess, and the bureaucrats are taking long summer vacations. Each year for the last five years, Canadians have been blessed, on average, with 2,208 pages of new federal laws, and 3,173 pages of new federal regulations, for a total of 5,381 pages of new obligations from Ottawa. “Ignorance of the law is no excuse,” the saying goes. But a law-abiding citizen who wanted to read the new federal laws and regulations, assuming the capacity to absorb one page of legal jargon in two minutes, would spend more than one month on this task, full-time, every year.
This is only the federal part of the burden. For example, new provincial laws and regulations adopted in Québec in 2000 filled more than 6,000 pages. Don’t believe that all the obligations described therein apply only to nasty capitalists. The Québec government’s Web site proudly shows a page called “How to change your address,” which lists 73 potential regulatory notifications to the provincial or federal government.
This kind of legislative avalanche used to be a European disease. Half a century ago, famous French legal theorist Georges Ripert described how his country had seen “the miracle of the multiplication of laws,” how everything had become hopelessly regulated. “The Frenchman,” he wrote, “is getting used to this administrative discipline. He knows that he cannot live without filing reports, requesting licences, that he cannot practice a profession, manage his wealth, acquire assets, move around, or even stay idle, without being answerable to the authorities” (Le Déclin du Droit, 1949, p. 94). You would think he was talking about today’s Canada.
As an example of the 36 statutes adopted last year by the federal Parliament, consider Chapter 17, “An Act to facilitate combating the laundering of proceeds of crime, to establish the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada and to amend and repeal certain Acts in consequence.” The only Act repealed, in fact, was the less burdensome and only 11-section long Proceeds of Crime Act of 1991. The new law extends over 99 sections which, among other things, require financial institutions to report “suspicious transactions,” force individuals entering in, or leaving, Canada with more than “the prescribed amount” of currency to file a report, allow customs officers to search people suspected of not complying, and establishes a brand-new enforcement bureaucracy.
Or consider the proposed “Act respecting the protection of wildlife species at risk in Canada” (Bill C-5), which passed first reading on February 2 of this year. Like its American model, this law would allow federal greenshirts to search and confiscate the use of any land where some DNA-equipped thing is deemed endangered. Endangered liberty and property, of course, don’t count.
Did we not go through deregulation? Not really. The regulatory production has slowed down, but the new regulations have been added to, not subtracted from, what existed before. In total the Canadian society and economy are more regulated today than 10, 20 and, of course, 50 years ago.
Regulation is difficult to quantify, but the number of pages of new laws and regulations provides as good a measure as we can find. Our chart shows some interesting data obtained from the Library of Parliament by Garry Breitkreuz, Canadian Alliance M.P for Yorkton-Melville Sask. We see that the total number of pages of laws and regulations adopted every year has peaked at more than 7,000 in the mid-80s, remained more or less constant until the mid-90s, and then dropped to its present level of some 5,000 new pages per year.
This picture is consistent with the evolution of public expenditures. In constant dollars per capita, total public expenditures in Canada increased until the early 1990s ($13,582 in 1992), and decreased through 1997 ($12,568 in constant 1992 dollars, or roughly their level of 1985). They have tended to pick up speed again during the last few years.
Another interesting phenomenon is apparent on our chart. If the volume of new regulations has been declining, the volume of new laws has remained on an upward trend. One might suspect a substitution of regulations for more complex laws. Indeed, it can be calculated that the size of the typical law adopted by the federal Parliament, which now reaches 14,000 words, has nearly doubled over the last five years.
Our data does not take into account the new projects envisioned by the federal government which, whether it be broadband telecommunications or (lowband) education, would require further legislation and regulation. Neither do the moving averages of our chart show how every election brings a new fit of legislation. The legislators are shooting at anything that moves.