Hon. Colin Deacon: Honourable senators, I rise to speak in support of Bill S-6, An Act respecting regulatory modernization.

Bill S-6 is part of a regulatory modernization initiative to address issues raised by businesses and Canadians about overly complicated, inconsistent or outdated requirements that have become barriers to innovation and economic growth. You won’t be surprised to learn that I think this is a pretty good thing.

I want to begin by thanking Senator Woo for his exceptional job of capturing the importance of the 47 amendments to 29 pieces of legislation that are included in this bill. That is not something that I could have accomplished, I can assure you. But I especially like the fact that he suggested that this was an important start. You’ll see that I very much agree with that point in my comments.

I also like the fact that Senator Smith did a great job of reminding us of the importance of smart regulation and the burden it places on start-ups in particular. Senator Smith, thank you for that.

These individual amendments have important economic and social themes to improve the ease of doing business, increase regulatory flexibility and agility and improve the integrity of the regulatory system. These are incredibly important goals. I would, however, humbly offer that a fourth is needed: to ensure that our legislation and regulations are not anti-competitive. But more on this later.

Bill S-6 is the second iteration of a planned annual tidy-up led by Treasury Board. It is the first annual regulatory modernization bill to originate in the Senate. I think that has some real importance to it on that point.

These 47 legislative amendments clear up some non-controversial legislative irritants, as Senator Woo said, that are limiting the ability of the resulting regulations to adjust to changing science, technology and business models, among other factors. They are considered so widely accepted that I am not going to focus on them in my second-reading speech.

Instead, I am going to focus on the single point that I believe is the most pressing, most crucial and most in need of robust attention and debate. My focus is on the fact that these 47 legislative amendments do not even scratch the surface of the changes needed to begin to modernize Canada’s regulatory burden, which will improve our competitiveness, as Senator Smith said, our productivity growth and our grandchildren’s prosperity.

I am going to propose in future that this particular bill should be renamed the “Regulatory Irritation Elimination Act” because what it is doing is a very good thing — a very good thing indeed. But it doesn’t come close to getting at the size and scale of the regulatory modernization challenge in Canada.

This is because Canada’s potential growth rate — the rate of growth that can occur without triggering inflation — has been declining. I believe that is because the innovations that could make our economy more productive are too often not incorporated into how we do business in Canada — how we do business in the private sector, in the government sector, in the academic sector and beyond.

Without urgent changes in how we legislate, regulate and procure, Canadian innovations will continue to get applied elsewhere, often resulting in the company migrating to another jurisdiction, along with the high-paying jobs those innovations create.

According to the 2018 OECD data, Canada leads the OECD in “command and control” regulations. This is not a good thing. Command and control-style regulations are those that define the process that must be followed to achieve a given regulatory outcome. Simply, by design, this type of legislation and resulting regulations eliminates the opportunity to innovate.

A very real example is when we define the use of a specific technology in the legislation of regulations, like the use of fax machines, which remains the case today in many jurisdictions. That approach makes Canadian fax machine salesmen really happy but it limits our productivity growth and, as a consequence, our competitiveness and prosperity.

Even more concerning, the OECD recently predicted that Canada will be the worst-performing advanced economy through 2030, and in the three decades that follow. I know a great many of us have been long concerned about this issue, including those of us who participated in Senator Harder’s Prosperity Action Group last year.

It’s worrisome but I find it deeply, deeply frustrating. That is because Canada is home to North America’s second-largest and fastest-growing innovation cluster, the Toronto-Waterloo Corridor. We are world-leading innovators and inventors, but our governments of all stripes at all levels have been unable to do the hard work of incorporating those innovations into how we legislate, regulate and procure.

So that’s where I hope we will place some attention as seven of our committees examine Bill S-6. Let’s focus on the process behind the government’s annual regulatory modernization and find ways to significantly expand and increasingly resource this process into the future, ensuring that it has the capacity, through this and other related processes, to support the urgent need for regulatory modernization at scale in Canada.

Now, when I say “adequately resourced,” am I suggesting even more government spending? No, I’m not. Billions of dollars of intended investments in innovation were announced in the last budget. It’s my profound belief that a tiny fraction of that amount can be redirected to increasingly fuel mandatory regulatory reform and enable greater regulatory agility in Canada. A very small redirection of these resources will reliably deliver increased innovation and business growth.

Simply, when you have an economy where existing legislation and regulations force the continued use of fax machines or limit the innovative use of drones or other technologies, you are choosing to have an economy that will be in perpetual decline as we progress through the digital era. Canadians will become the disrupted when we could be the disrupters.

I believe that this challenge provides the Senate with an important opportunity to play a meaningful role in driving this process into government. I say this because the level of political will in the other place has not translated into meaningful success.

If it had, we wouldn’t need Bill S-6. To prove my point, let me read to you some past quotes from the government side of the other place.

Here’s the first quote:

The key to prosperity is to increase our productivity . . . .

We must adapt to the new world reality or fall behind in the effort to preserve and enhance our future prosperity.

But there are growing concerns from Canadians about our ability to compete. . . .

Governments have a responsibility to create an environment favourable to the growth of competitive enterprise.

Here’s another:

One of the barriers to growth — job growth in particular — for small and medium-sized business is the burden of regulatory compliance and reporting. The volume of paperwork required for compliance represents a drain on entrepreneurial energy. . . .

Reduction of the regulatory burden will require close consultation with other levels of government in order to reduce, streamline, and eliminate overlap in regulations.

And here is one final quote:

In order to promote job creation and improve the conditions for business investment, the Government has taken a range of actions to . . . improve the regulatory environment, promote business competitiveness . . . .

That document also proposed “Modernizing regulation and legislation to better protect investors and taxpayers . . .”

I bet you are seeing a bit of a repetitive nature in these comments. Interestingly, the first was from the Mulroney government’s 1991 budget. The second was taken from the Liberal platform in the 1993 election, drafted by Paul Martin and to some degree implemented by the Chrétien government. The third was from the Harper government’s 2014 budget.

Every federal government over almost 40 years has been trying to improve productivity growth. All the while, Canada’s regulatory burden continues to grow and productivity continues to decline.

But I want to stop here and be very clear. I am not talking about deregulation. I am talking about making sure that our regulations do not hamper our ability to innovate and improve, to be increasingly globally competitive and to increase the prosperity of future generations.

The fact is, either a business disrupts or is disrupted. It happens much, much faster today than a decade ago. Our regulators have an essential responsibility to embrace innovation and help to ensure that our economy ends up on the right side of the disrupter/disrupted divide. We have to get serious about regulatory modernization, now.

So I ask the seven committees studying portions of Bill S-6 to please consider Bill S-6 as an important first step, but we need so much more. Please choose a few witnesses and save a few questions for the purpose of exploring how a much larger, more robust, transparent regulatory modernization process might be established by this government.

I believe that in the Senate we may be far better positioned to examine the veracity of the process that resulted in the 47 amendments included in Bill S-6 than attempt to determine the appropriateness of each one of these highly technical legislative amendments. The better the process, the more confidence we can have in the resulting amendments.

As a result, colleagues, I would ask that you consider examining the following:

First, the selection process. Currently, amendments are proposed by departments through a call letter from the Treasury Board Secretariat. Canadians and businesses can share suggestions, but it is likely that this process could be more robust and more consultative. The risk is that lobbyists, who invariably represent more established incumbents, may saturate the process, overpowering and diminishing the less powerful voices of innovative new entrants.

Second, look at the review process itself. Here I ask you to consider three points:

One is whether the approach used is based in principle and clearly defines the risks that need to be managed rather than defining one particular way to solve the problem. We have to give Canadian businesses the flexibility to innovate.

Second, I ask you to consider where a transparent regulatory modernization process might build on publicly controlled and auditable technical standards, ultimately limiting and de-risking the process for regulators and potentially making the process more agile in future.

Third, consider the opportunity to incorporate a useful tool developed by the Competition Bureau in 2019. Their five-step checklist includes an assessment to ensure that a regulation is not anti-competitive. A similar approach could be applied in this review.

Lastly, I ask you to examine possible capacity limitations. Consider the real or possible barriers and limitations, for example, a limited number of legislative drafters, that may have appeared in the Bill S-6 process or that might create a bottleneck at the end of what we hope will become a much larger and increasingly inclusive and effective public process.

Colleagues, if we want to get serious about prioritizing enduring change on this issue, we need to integrate an inclusive, systematic principles-based approach to regulatory reform that prioritizes outcome-oriented versus process-controlling regulations.

This will require us to ensure that the processes for eliminating regulatory irritants and modernizing our regulations are not anti-competitive, meaning that it does not favour incumbents over new entrants and that it’s technology agnostic, meaning that we do not define the use of a given technology. You may find other risk factors to manage, and I hope you do.

I want to wrap up with a recent salient story. As some of you may know, SpaceX’s Starlink network has been providing satellite broadband service to Ukraine since Russia’s horrific invasion. Russia attempted to foil Starlink’s service through an aggressive electromagnetic warfare attack. As the attack unfolded, Starlink’s engineers rewrote code on the fly, which immediately stymied the jamming attack. The incredible speed of Starlink’s response amazed Dave Tremper, the Director of Electronic Warfare at the Pentagon. He explained that the Pentagon could never respond as quickly because they have to issue a contract out to fix a problem rather than being able to address it instantly in-house.

How the Pentagon regulates procurement puts them at risk of being disrupted and creates a security vulnerability. How the Pentagon regulates procurement creates risk, it doesn’t eliminate it.

That’s the opposite of its intention, I have no doubt.

Government needs to harness the private sector’s ability to innovate and act swiftly. We all need to become more nimble. That’s because the world is moving increasingly rapidly. We need to change those rules that are within our control if we are to keep up, if we are to compete and if we are to prosper.

Let’s prioritize the themes of the Annual Regulatory Modernization initiative that led to the creation of Bill S-6 so we increase the ease of doing business, improve the regulatory flexibility and agility and improve our regulatory system, and also ensure that our regulations are not anti-competitive. Competition drives innovation, productivity growth and prosperity.

This government needs to keep advancing the items I have outlined today if Canada is to achieve these important goals and protect and enhance the prosperity of our grandkids.

I support Bill S-6 and I especially support increased efforts to eliminate regulatory irritations and modernize our regulations.

Thank you, colleagues.

The Hon. the Speaker pro tempore: Is it your pleasure, honourable senators, to adopt the motion?

The Hon. the Speaker pro tempore: Honourable senators, when shall this bill, as amended, be read the third time?

(On motion of Senator Black, bill, as amended, placed on the Orders of the Day for third reading at the next sitting of the Senate.)

On the Order:

Resuming debate on the motion of the Honourable Senator McCallum, seconded by the Honourable Senator Mégie, for the second reading of Bill S-218, An Act to amend the Department for Women and Gender Equality Act.

(On motion of Senator Wells, debate adjourned.)

On the Order:

Resuming debate on the motion of the Honourable Senator Ataullahjan, seconded by the Honourable Senator Boisvenu, for the second reading of Bill S-224, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (trafficking in persons).

Hon. Senators: Agreed.

(Motion agreed to and bill read second time.)

(On motion of Senator Wells, for Senator Ataullahjan, bill referred to the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights.)

On the Order:

Resuming debate on the motion of the Honourable Senator Griffin, seconded by the Honourable Senator Tannas, for the second reading of Bill S-236, An Act to amend the Employment Insurance Act and the Employment Insurance Regulations (Prince Edward Island).

Hon. Rose-May Poirier: Honourable senators, I rise today at second reading of Bill S-236, An Act to amend the Employment Insurance Act and the Employment Insurance Regulations, sponsored by Senator Diane Griffin.

Colleagues, please allow me a few moments to pay tribute to our former colleague Senator Griffin before I speak more to Bill S-236. Although Senator Griffin served with us for a little over five years, she has left a lasting impression in the Senate. She fought for what she believed was right and defended the interests of her dear Island and province of Prince Edward Island at every opportunity. It is therefore a pleasure for me to be critic — but a supportive critic — of Bill S-236.

Bill S-236’s objective is to bring a crucial and fundamental change to the EI economic region of P.E.I. The goal is simple: to ensure that Prince Edward Island is designated as one region for the purpose of EI economic regions. Currently, the province is divided into two EI economic regions: Charlottetown and Prince Edward Island to encompass all the regions outside Charlottetown. A small province where mobility is easy — as is living in one region and working in another — can present challenges for EI.

For example, for the current period from April 10 to May 7, if someone resided in Charlottetown but worked in Summerside, their EI benefits can be a minimum of 16 weeks to a maximum of 42 weeks. But if someone lives in Summerside and works in Charlottetown, their benefits can be a minimum of 18 weeks to a maximum of 44 weeks. If we look at the period covering October 10, 2021, to November 6, 2021, the difference is even greater. The minimum number of weeks for Charlottetown was 14 weeks while the rest of P.E.I. was set at 24.

Those 10 weeks, honourable senators, make a big difference. For some families, it could represent a real challenge to put food on the table on a consistent basis. As a senator from a region with a high unemployment rate in a seasonal economy, I fully and heartily understand the importance of EI fairness. If my region of Kent County had to be included in the EI economic region of Moncton, it would be just as unfair.

Moreover, I understand the frustration when decisions are made thousands of kilometres away and don’t correspond to the reality of the region. Too often, these decisions are rushed and done with little to no consultation. When you are a region that doesn’t have as much population and therefore not as much political weight, your issues and priorities can sometimes be treated differently. For example, the latest Department of Fisheries and Oceans decision to close the mackerel and herring fisheries has upset fishermen in Atlantic Canada. It’s not necessarily about closing the fisheries but more about how the government arrived at that decision. There was no consultation with the people on the water, and the decision dropped so close to the beginning of the fishing season that it caused a lot of frustration and anxiety.

Moving forward, I hope government departments and agencies as a whole will improve how they assess the impact of their decisions for regions they are not as familiar with. Too often, the unintended consequences could be avoided through consultation with the people on the ground.

To bring some fairness to Employment Insurance in Prince Edward Island, I support Bill S-236. As Senator Griffin said in her speech, it has been seven years since the federal government has promised a return to one EI economic zone. A House of Commons report has also made the recommendation for one EI economic zone. Let’s exercise our role as a voice for the province to first send this bill to committee and to eventually give the House of Commons the opportunity to bring EI fairness to the people of Prince Edward Island. Thank you.

Some Hon. Senators: Hear, hear.

(On motion of Senator Duncan, debate adjourned.)

On the Order:

Resuming debate on the motion of the Honourable Senator Kutcher, seconded by the Honourable Senator Boehm:

That the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology be authorized, when and if it is formed, to examine and report on the Federal Framework for Suicide Prevention, including, but not limited to:

(a)evaluating the effectiveness of the Framework in significantly, substantially and sustainably decreasing rates of suicide since it was enacted;

(b)examining the rates of suicide in Canada as a whole and in unique populations, such as Indigenous, racialized and youth communities;

(c)reporting on the amount of federal funding provided to all suicide prevention programs or initiatives for the period 2000-2020 and determining what evidence-based criteria for suicide prevention was used in each selection;

(d)determining for each of the programs or interventions funded in paragraph (c), whether there was a demonstrated significant, substantive and sustained decrease in suicide rates in the population(s) targeted; and

(e)providing recommendations to ensure that Canada’s Federal Framework for Suicide Prevention and federal funding for suicide prevention activities are based on best available evidence of impact on suicide rate reduction; and

That the committee submit its final report on this study to the Senate no later than December 16, 2022.

Hon. Patrick Brazeau: Honourable senators, this is the third time in three years that I have spoken about the issue of suicide prevention for reasons that relate to my personal situation years ago. When dealing with the issues of suicide prevention and mental health, we have to be open, transparent and honest if we are going to bring about any changes.

Several years ago, when I was having problems, I went into therapy. The therapy was a mix of mostly men coming out of jail and men who voluntarily enlisted to go to these places to get help. I quickly learned that the success rate for these provincial places where men go to get help was about 2%. That’s not very high.

When I got there, at one point, they knew I was coming to this centre for help, and the people there rolled out the red carpet. When I got there, I didn’t want a red carpet. One of the reasons why men and women go to these places is because they need help; they are hurting. In my case, it was because I had almost completely hit rock bottom. I wanted to live at rock bottom. As you can appreciate, it was not very easy, but I’m here today.

My experiences in those therapies gave me first-hand experience of some of the commonalities that many people who are hurting, people who are contemplating suicide and many people who have committed suicide, have. A lot of it has to do with two things — I’m not an expert. I didn’t study in this field, but through my human connections with the people who were at these therapies, people were hurting and felt that they were not understood. Those are the commonalities that I saw in people who contemplated suicide.

After I went to those places, and once I started slowly getting healthier mentally and physically, I wanted to give back. I didn’t know at that particular point in time how I could give back. There are many suicides of Indigenous people in Canada, and many of them go unreported. We know now, in 2022, what the residential school system has done to Indigenous peoples generation after generation. It has broken individuals, families and nations. People are still hurting today. Even though we are getting apologies left, right and centre, it doesn’t fix the fact that the Government of Canada and others have hurt Indigenous peoples.

Indigenous peoples do not have access to the services that they desperately need to move forward. We all talk about reconciliation, but where is the reparation? I know there is a former government that apologized to residential school survivors, and I know that some things are being done, but until the federal and provincial governments together offer services that are desperately needed to First Nations peoples and other Indigenous peoples across Canada, how will we get to any reconciliation? Will we wait another 20 years? We will still be talking about mental health issues and suicide prevention among Indigenous peoples and other Canadians 20 years from now.

That is why in December 2019 I introduced a motion to deal with mental health, giving particular emphasis to young men and boys and Indigenous peoples. Why did I introduce that motion in 2019? It was my way of giving back. But it was not just that. My office conducted research, and the conclusions were very basic. We asked every provincial and territorial government to share with us what they did in terms of suicide prevention. If you recall, the report was shared with all senators at that time.

We have seen that in terms of the services available to young girls and women in the provinces and territories across Canada, they have more access to programs than young boys and men, yet 75% of suicides in Canada are committed by men. We need services for men.

I am the first among many to say that I don’t speak highly of the therapies that I took part in. Numbers are numbers, and facts are facts. There is a 2% success rate, and I will share the fact that I felt that I wasted my time during my six months of therapy. I have some things to say on how to improve those therapies and how to offer more services for young boys and men.

Perhaps if there were services for young boys and men, maybe there would be fewer men using substances and alcohol. Maybe there would be less anger management issues. Maybe there would be less trouble with the law. Maybe men would be in fewer abusive relationships. However, those programs don’t necessarily exist across the board for young boys and men.

For a lot of us, we are taught at a very young age to hide our emotions, to be tough, to suck it up and walk it off. For some of us, when we do that, the more we keep inside, the more we explode when things don’t go right.

I am the first to admit I didn’t have the tools. I met different psychiatrists. Bad experiences. I had one good experience. It is all on a case-by-case basis.

But that motion was never really debated because then COVID came in. In November 2020, I had to reintroduce that same motion. If you recall, I also asked you, colleagues, for help. In particular, I went to Senator Kutcher — because we are dealing with his motion today — and I asked him for his help because he is an expert. Senator Kutcher told me that he was going to help me, he was going to be in touch with my office and his staff was going to be in touch with my office. Unfortunately, I never heard from Senator Kutcher.

I want to bring in some context. I’m not taking the floor today to point any fingers or to shame anybody, but I was a little bit surprised that this motion was introduced because I found out about it about a week before it was introduced. As a matter of fact, I found out from other Indigenous colleagues that Senator Kutcher was going to introduce this motion. It caught me by surprise because for two years, I had this motion that — like I mentioned, it didn’t get properly debated because of outside forces and I never heard from Senator Kutcher for two years. And Senator Kutcher decided to introduce this motion.

Again, this is not a question of sour grapes. It is not a question of trying to take credit. It is not a question of ego because, for myself, I parked my ego in January 2016 when I tried to commit suicide, and I left my ego there.

When we talk about suicide prevention, a lot of people, including myself — I was hurting, I was ashamed to ask for help. When I gave those speeches in 2019 and 2020, I was proud because it was my way of not just healing but of trying to give back because I had hurt so many people.

This is why this motion surprised me. I know that Senator Batters and Senator Patterson spoke to it, and I agree with their concerns. I have concerns as well. I know that Senator Kutcher is an expert. I respect Senator Kutcher, but I have to say, colleagues, there are some people who believe that Indigenous people don’t belong in the Senate. I’ve heard it before. There are some who believe that Indigenous peoples have just knowledge or expertise in Indigenous issues. This is why I was sort of hurt and surprised.

Obviously, it is Senator Kutcher’s right to introduce what he wants, but I was a little bit surprised because I just sat back and thought, well, if I can’t as an Indigenous person receive an acknowledgment that perhaps I do have — maybe not expertise, but I certainly have, unfortunately, experience in this issue, but my call wasn’t heeded and my call was ignored — then that kind of goes against what we preach when we talk about mental health when asking for help.

I am going to support this motion. Hopefully, Senator Kutcher and the committee will work with me because my hand as an Indigenous person is always extended, and is always open. My heart is open. My mind is open. It is clear. I don’t want to work on these issues to take credit for anything. I want to learn and I want to help if I can.

Senator Kutcher, as an Indigenous person, this is also part of reconciliation. You have your whole life that you have contributed to this and you have your expertise, and I have lived experience. As an example, when we talk about suicide prevention, there are some who will say, well, if we take away guns, we will reduce the number of suicides. And that’s true. But that’s just one way of looking at statistics. Because at the same time, we know that many law enforcement individuals who commit suicide use their guns.

When we talk about Indigenous suicide, number one, suicide wasn’t really exercised by Indigenous peoples before the arrival of the White man. I say “White man,” and my mom was White, so I hope nobody takes offence to me saying that. When we look at Indigenous suicides, they don’t necessarily use guns. They use other methods. There is not a one-stop shop in dealing with these issues. It is really a case-by-case basis. No one recipe can fix this, and this is why we need to work together.

Just look at the other place. How long did they debate having a three-digit number for people in distress? This shouldn’t be a partisan issue. I know it’s a Conservative who introduced it. I mean, one of the suicide numbers is 833-456-4566. It just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it? But in the other place, having a three-digit hotline number for people with mental health issues or a suicide line, the motion was unanimously adopted in November 2020, I believe, and we are still not there yet. We still don’t have the three-digit number. So this cannot be a partisan issue.

As I say, this is not to throw mud, but it is to show that, regardless of me, Indigenous peoples have more contributions to bring to Parliament than just on Indigenous issues. Going forward, I hope that not only will you work with me because I look forward to working with you, Senator Kutcher, and the committee so that not only do we get this right, but we actually do something meaningful — meaningful and not just words. Kitchi meegwetch for listening.

Senator Brazeau: I will always answer a question from my dear Senator Mary Jane McCallum.

Hon. Mary Jane McCallum: Thank you for taking the question, Senator Brazeau. When you look at the very unique circumstances that Indigenous peoples face in Canada — that their circumstance of suicide and the prevention that needs to go with it is itself very unique — do you agree that the committee should understand that they need to bring in Indigenous peoples that have traditional Indigenous knowledge and degree and their historical — well, some of them have degrees, but it is more towards decolonized mental health therapies and I know quite a few. Do you think they have a major role to play in bringing understanding of the issues that we face as Indigenous people?