Browse regulations

This regulation applies subsection 58(1) of the Species at Risk Act to the critical habitat of the Threehorn Wartyback (a freshwater mussel species), as identified in its recovery strategy on the Species at Risk Public Registry, effective upon registration.

Canadians would be worse off if deleted because this protects critical habitat for an endangered species, preventing irreversible biodiversity loss and ecosystem damage that would have cascading environmental and economic costs beyond immediate regulatory compliance.

This order applies subsection 58(1) of the Species at Risk Act to protect the critical habitat of the Fawnsfoot mussel, restricting land use to prevent activities that could harm the species.

Uncompensated property restrictions reduce land supply, increase housing costs, and stifle economic activity; the diffuse costs to Canadians outweigh speculative benefits, and conservation is better achieved voluntarily.

This regulation designates critical habitat for the Lilliput (a freshwater mussel species) under the Species at Risk Act, making it legally protected under subsection 58(1).

Canadians would be worse off if this regulation was deleted because it provides legal protection for an endangered species' habitat, preventing irreversible biodiversity loss and ecosystem damage that would be extremely difficult to reverse once lost.

Emergency regulation prohibiting assemblies, travel, and property use that may cause breach of peace or disrupt critical infrastructure/trade during a public order emergency. Grants powers to designate protected places, requisition goods/services, and impose fines/imprisonment.

Keeping this regulation violates fundamental freedoms of assembly and movement with vague standards enabling arbitrary enforcement. It authorizes property seizure with inadequate compensation and creates a dangerous precedent for emergency powers that suppress dissent. The costs to liberty far outweigh any marginal benefit in clearing blockades, which can be addressed by existing criminal law.

This Order simultaneously extends Most-Favoured-Nation Tariff benefits to Belarus and Russia goods (s.2) and withdraws them (s.3), with staggered coming-into-force dates creating an incoherent and contradictory trade policy.

The regulation's internal contradiction creates legal uncertainty, increases compliance costs, and erodes confidence in the regulatory system. Keeping it signals poor governance and imposes deadweight losses as businesses and officials struggle to interpret a policy that cannot be rationally applied. The brief, one-day window of benefit serves no legitimate economic purpose and should be eliminated entirely.

Applies Species at Risk Act protections to critical habitat of the St. Lawrence River Striped Bass population, excluding designated wildlife areas and bird sanctuaries.

Deletion would risk extinction of a historically depleted species, causing irreversible biodiversity loss; habitat protection requires enforceable restrictions on private land use that voluntary measures cannot reliably provide.

Regulations governing clinical trials for COVID-19 drugs and medical devices, establishing authorization requirements, safety protocols, and oversight mechanisms for testing investigational treatments and devices during the pandemic.

These regulations provide essential oversight for clinical trials involving COVID-19 treatments, ensuring patient safety, scientific integrity, and public health protection. Without them, there would be no standardized framework to evaluate experimental treatments, potentially exposing participants to unproven or dangerous interventions while undermining public trust in medical research.

Lists specific First Nations Education Jurisdiction Agreements and sets their effective date, enabling First Nations control over education in BC.

Deleting it would undermine negotiated self-governance; the regulation ensures local jurisdictional control, aligning with subsidiarity and allowing communities to manage their own education systems without central interference.

Clean Fuel Regulations establish a low-carbon fuel standard requiring primary suppliers (gasoline/diesel producers/importers) to reduce carbon intensity of their fuel pools by set amounts and meet volumetric blending requirements (5% gasoline replacement, 2% diesel replacement). Uses lifecycle assessment model, compliance credits, and extensive reporting/verification bureaucracy. Applies to all but smallest suppliers (<400 m³/period).

This regulation substitutes centralized government planning for market-driven innovation, imposing massive compliance costs that raise fuel prices for all Canadians. The complex lifecycle carbon accounting creates a pseudo-market in compliance credits prone to manipulation and rent-seeking. It violates property rights by mandating specific fuel formulations and blending, stifles competition by favoring incumbent producers who can afford the bureaucracy, and harms economic competitiveness. The alleged environmental benefits are speculative and could be achieved more efficiently through carbon pricing or voluntary standards, letting producers and consumers discover optimal solutions. The unseen costs—reduced investment, slower technological evolution, increased poverty from higher energy costs—far outweigh any predictable benefits.

Comprehensive ban on single-use plastics including bags, cutlery, straws, and food containers with specific durability and composition standards, plus phased implementation over 2-3.5 years

Creates artificial scarcity, drives up costs for consumers and businesses, restricts voluntary market solutions, and imposes compliance burdens without clear environmental benefits - the unseen costs of reduced choice and innovation outweigh stated goals

This is a Code of Professional Conduct and Competence for licensed immigration and citizenship consultants regulated by the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants. It establishes standards of practice including duties of loyalty, honesty, confidentiality, and competence; prohibits conflicts of interest (particularly regarding employment/student recruitment services); mandates detailed written consultation and service agreements with specific disclosure requirements; regulates fees, advance payments held in trust, and billing practices; and outlines procedures for complaints, errors/omissions, and termination of services.

Immigration consulting involves high-stakes decisions with vulnerable clients facing complex legal systems where fraud and exploitation are serious risks. The regulation's disclosure requirements and conflict-of-interest rules are necessary because clients often lack the information or sophistication to protect themselves, and failures can result in catastrophic consequences including deportation. The competency standards ensure minimum expertise in a complex legal field. While the rules impose compliance costs, these are justified by the asymmetry of information and power between consultants and clients, and the severe harm that can result from incompetent or dishonest advice. Market mechanisms alone are insufficient because immigration outcomes are non-transparent until too late, and victims may be deported before seeking redress.

Temporary order granting remission of customs duties and SIMA duties on goods originating from Ukraine, with exclusions for certain tariff items, applicable to imports between June 2022 and 2025/2026, requiring claims within two years, and repealing June 2028.

Canadians would be worse off because deletion would reinstate tariffs on Ukrainian goods, raising prices and reducing competition. The regulation achieves targeted tariff relief that would be difficult to secure through comprehensive legislative reform in Canada's protectionist environment.

Establishes a federal offset credit system for greenhouse gas reduction projects, creating a market-based mechanism for carbon credits with detailed registration, verification, and compliance requirements.

Creates complex regulatory bureaucracy that increases costs for businesses, distorts market incentives, and centralizes control over emissions reduction decisions that would be better handled through voluntary market mechanisms.

Regulation prohibits release of halocarbons (refrigerants, fire extinguishing agents, solvents), requires certified technicians for installation/service/recovery, mandates leak testing, imposes record-keeping (inventories, activity logs, reports), and establishes permit system for exceptions. Applies to federal lands, military, indigenous lands. Prohibits use/charging of certain high-GWP halocarbons in most systems.

This regulation embodies the central planning fallacy: government attempting to substitute its knowledge for the dispersed knowledge of market participants. The certification requirement creates an unnecessary barrier to entry, reducing supply of technicians and driving up service costs for consumers—particularly harming low-income Canadians who face higher prices for essential refrigeration and air conditioning. The prescriptive technical mandates (specific leak test frequencies, purge limits, recovery equipment specs) prevent innovation and adaptation to local conditions; competitive markets would discover cheaper, more effective methods. The extensive reporting and inventory requirements impose crushing administrative burdens, especially on small operators, diverting resources from actual environmental improvement to paperwork compliance. While halocarbons may create externalities, the command-and-control approach here is the worst solution: it stifles competition, inflates costs, and creates a regulatory regime that serves the institutional interest of regulators and certified technicians rather than environmental outcomes. A properly designed tax on halocarbon emissions or tradable permit system would internalize the externality at a fraction of the deadweight cost, allowing technicians and owners to find the most efficient reduction methods. The regulation's 'permit' exception process merely institutionalizes arbitrary discretion—the very opposite of rule of law—letting the Ministerpick winners based on opaque feasibility determinations. This is regulation as corruption of the price system, replacing organic coordination with bureaucratic edict.

Federal regulations governing hunting, possession, and management of migratory birds in Canada, including permit requirements, seasonal restrictions, and conservation measures.

These regulations create unnecessary bureaucratic barriers to hunting and bird management, impose excessive permit requirements, and restrict private property rights without clear evidence of superior conservation outcomes compared to less restrictive approaches.