Senator Yuen Pau Woo

Speech from the Throne

Motion for Address in Reply—Debate Continued

On the Order:

Resuming debate on the motion of the Honourable Senator Gold, P.C., seconded by the Honourable Senator LaBoucane-Benson:

That the following Address be presented to His Majesty the King:

To His Most Excellent Majesty Charles the Third, by the Grace of God King of Canada and His other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth.

MAY IT PLEASE YOUR MAJESTY:

We, Your Majesty’s most loyal and dutiful subjects, the Senate of Canada in Parliament assembled, beg leave to offer our humble thanks to Your Majesty for the gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both houses of Parliament.

Hon. Yuen Pau Woo: Honourable senators, my response to the Speech from the Throne addresses three connected issues at the forefront of public policy: Canada’s need to respond rapidly and decisively to changes in the world order, Parliament’s responsibility to oversee the powers used in that response and the importance of regulatory practices that keep pace with a fast-changing world. This is not a speech about any one bill, but colleagues will recognize its relevance to legislation we have considered and will be asked to consider. I offer it not as a discussion of parliamentary procedure for its own sake but as a framework for our ongoing review of legislation.

We should equip Canadians to act decisively, strengthen our economic resilience, develop new markets and respond to technological change. However, giving government the capacity to act must not mean diminishing Parliament’s capacity to hold it accountable.

Much of the legislation we pass gives ministers, departments and agencies authority to make regulations. We encounter this whenever we are told that a detail in a bill will be “sorted out in regulation.”

However, our responsibility does not end when the bill receives Royal Assent.

The enabling legislation determines who may make regulations, on what subjects and within what limits. The Statutory Instruments Act, or SIA, provides the broader framework for examination, registration, publication and parliamentary scrutiny.

Delegation is necessary. Parliament cannot reasonably write every technical specification needed to implement legislation. However, the more we rely on delegated authority, the more important its oversight becomes.

That, colleagues, is the role of the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations, or REGS, on which I have the privilege of serving as joint chair. Senators and members of the House of Commons work together, supported by specialist legal counsel.

Our ordinary scrutiny takes place after regulations have been made. The central question is not whether we would have chosen the same policy. It is whether delegated authority has been exercised lawfully and appropriately, with proper regard for rights, procedural requirements and clarity.

The committee seeks explanations, corrections and amendments. It can report unresolved concerns to Parliament and, in appropriate cases, recommend disallowance through the statutory procedure involving both houses.

Our work may not make headlines, but a low public profile and low attendance in the chamber tonight should not be mistaken for low constitutional importance.

Parliament can delegate the making of regulations. It cannot delegate its responsibility to oversee them.

That responsibility makes me concerned about a disturbing pattern in recent legislation: important new executive powers accompanied by provisions excluding particular instruments from the ordinary statutory framework for scrutiny.

Consider the Building Canada Act, which we just discussed. It excludes from the Statutory Instruments Act the orders that add projects to the national interest list, change their names or descriptions, or remove them. It also excludes the ministerial document deemed to constitute specified project authorizations.

The 2026 amendments to the Red Tape Reduction Act provide another example. Subject to conditions, ministers may grant temporary exemptions from statutory and regulatory requirements to facilitate testing in clean technology and financial technology. Orders made under that power are expressly excluded from the definition of a statutory instrument.

These laws contain other publication, reporting and accountability provisions. They do not remove all parliamentary oversight. However, those arrangements are not equivalent to preserving the ordinary, automatic referral of statutory instruments to REGS.

Why should a power to exempt someone from requirements Parliament has enacted be accompanied by an exemption from the normal mechanism for scrutinizing delegated power?

Why should the importance of a project diminish the importance of checking whether authority has been exercised properly? It’s important to remember that REGS is not a pre-approval stage through which regulations must pass before taking effect. Its scrutiny follows their making. Removing that scrutiny does not reduce a step in an approval process.

A departure from the usual framework may sometimes be justified, but government should explain why it is necessary and demonstrate that the remaining safeguards are adequate.

A clause excluding an instrument from the SIA should prompt questions from every committee examining the bill and every parliamentarian asked to support it.

This is not about trusting or distrusting a particular minister. Powers can and will outlast the circumstances that prompted their creation and the governments that requested them.

Scrutiny is not red tape. It is part of the responsibility that comes with exercising public power.

Other parliaments offer useful examples of how to examine these questions before legislation is passed. In the U.K., the House of Lords Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee examines bills for inappropriate delegation and inadequate parliamentary scrutiny. The committee’s reports inform consideration of the bill while it can still be amended.

This committee does not replace Parliament’s legislative judgment. They help parliamentarians exercise it by providing specialist assessments of the authority they are being asked to confer.

We should strengthen that function in our own Parliament. Government bills should come with a clear explanation of the powers being delegated, why delegation is necessary, what limits apply and how Parliament will oversee their exercise.

This was a question I would have asked the ministers if I had had time to do so.

This need not begin with creating another committee. We should examine how existing arrangements can be strengthened, with clear responsibilities, sufficient legal support and reports available in time to inform consideration of a bill’s clauses. Scrutiny before powers are granted and scrutiny after they are exercised serve different purposes. Both are needed.

Honourable senators, protecting scrutiny does not mean resisting innovation. Parliamentary oversight should help government use new tools responsibly, not prevent it from doing so.

That brings me to incorporation by reference and the contribution that recognized Canadian standards can make to better regulation.

Incorporation by reference allows a regulation to refer to an outside document rather than reproduce its contents. The relevant requirements can thereby acquire legal force. For example, a regulation might require compliance with specified provisions of a technical standard rather than reproduce every specification.

The 2015 amendments to the Statutory Instruments Act expressly authorized incorporation by reference, subject to statutory limits. They also required incorporated material to be accessible.

Canada has an established standards system on which regulators can draw. A National Standard of Canada is developed by an organization accredited by the Standards Council of Canada. Why should government reproduce suitable technical work when it can responsibly use that work by reference? The opportunity is to devote regulatory effort to assessing what serves the public interest rather than repeatedly drafting technical specifications from scratch.

Recognition, however, is not a substitute for judgment. Government must decide whether a standard is suitable for the objective Parliament has authorized it to pursue.

The distinction is between drawing on outside expertise and handing over responsibility for public policy. We should welcome the former without accepting the latter.

That distinction explains REGS’s longstanding interest in incorporation by reference and the question of “accessibility.”

In June 2018, our former colleague Senator Joseph Day reminded this chamber of a basic principle: People expected to obey the law must have a reasonable opportunity to discover what it requires. He highlighted concerns about incorporated documents that had to be purchased, were difficult to obtain or were not available in both official languages.

On May 25, 2026, the committee accepted the government’s response to this longstanding accessibility file and agreed to close it.

Counsel reported that Treasury Board had confirmed completion of its guidance in January 2025. Counsel had reviewed it and confirmed that it addressed cost, language and point-in-time access, which is the ability to consult the version applicable on a particular date.

The government has not adopted a statutory definition of “accessible.” It maintains that a single definition would be too rigid for the different documents that can be incorporated. Instead, the guidance addresses circumstances involving copyright, cost, documents available in only one official language and difficulty obtaining earlier versions.

The committee accepted this guidance-based response as sufficient to resolve its request.

This is parliamentary scrutiny doing more than just identifying problems. The committee pressed for answers, examined the response and accepted a practical way forward.

The next step is to put the accepted approach into practice and build on it.

In 2024, Senator Colin Deacon and I hosted a workshop on standards in government rulemaking, bringing together standards organizations and regulators. Participants explored how standards could support more timely regulation and reduce unnecessary duplication.

Workshop participants argued that Canada was underutilizing these tools. Some told us that long-standing accessibility concerns and the committee’s earlier positions had contributed to caution within parts of the public service. That is why the committee’s May 25 acceptance of the government’s response is so important. It provides officials with the confidence to use incorporation by reference responsibly.

However, I would go further. It is not just that incorporation by reference can be used in the flexible way that the government has proposed and the committee has accepted. It is also that regulators should systematically examine whether a suitable National Standard of Canada or another recognized international standard already exists before developing a new technical requirement.

Where a relevant standard exists, the published regulatory explanation should state whether it is being adopted, adapted or not used — and why.

That would not require regulators to accept standards that fail to meet Canadian needs; however, it would require them to assess existing technical work before reproducing it.

Our objective should be to use Canada’s standards system effectively while avoiding unnecessary differences from suitable approaches used elsewhere.

The Cabinet Directive on Regulation already directs departments to consider incorporation by reference, including internationally accepted standards. It addresses accessibility, official languages and continuing review.

The task now is to turn encouragement into consistent, documented consideration, supported by the expertise and resources needed for sound decisions.

The Treasury Board has announced a review of the directive that includes considering stronger expectations to use existing regulatory approaches before developing uniquely Canadian solutions. I welcome that opening and have encouraged the President of the Treasury Board and his office to more deliberately consider the role of standards.

Greater use of standards must preserve public responsibility. Regulators should assess a standard’s suitability and the inclusiveness of its development. Technical expertise matters, but so do the perspectives of consumers, workers, persons with disabilities, Indigenous Peoples and others affected.

We should work with the Standards Council of Canada and standards organizations to anticipate regulatory needs earlier, including language, accessibility and arrangements for revisions. Access must be practical. Regulators should maintain reliable inventories, provide clear directions to incorporated material, arrange access to relevant historical versions and meet applicable official language obligations.

There must also be a sustainable basis for developing and maintaining standards. Incorporated material may remain subject to third-party copyright; public access and intellectual property, therefore, need to be addressed together.

Government should work with standards organizations on licensing, translation and archiving arrangements that let people consult the requirements they must obey while supporting the organizations that produce them.

Regulations incorporating standards should remain subject to parliamentary scrutiny. Moving technical detail into an outside document must not become another route around accountability.

Honourable senators, these arguments belong together. Canada needs the capacity to respond decisively to a changing world. That calls for effective regulation, capable institutions and accountability, not a choice from among them.

The Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations’ resolution of the accessibility file shows that scrutiny can accommodate practical solutions. That is very different from excluding executive instruments from the ordinary scrutiny framework.

For colleagues less familiar with the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations, its work deserves your attention and support. Its mandate deserves protection. When concerns remain unanswered, the committee needs both houses to support it.

When we examine bills, we should look beyond their promises —

The Hon. the Speaker pro tempore: I’m sorry, senator. Your time has expired.

Senator Woo: May I have two moments?

Hon. Senators: Agreed.

Senator Woo: When we examine bills, we should look beyond their promises to the powers through which they will be implemented. What authority are we granting? What limits apply? What scrutiny are we preserving? What are we being asked to surrender? Those questions belong to every parliamentarian; they belong to all of us. Thank you.