Browse regulations

This order seizes a specific Russian-owned An-124-100-150 cargo aircraft (RA-82078) at Toronto's Pearson International Airport, transferring possession and control to the Minister of Public Works and Government Services to prevent any dealings with the aircraft. It repeals a previous similar order and applies retroactively before publication.

Canadians would be worse off if this aircraft was deleted because it enforces economic sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, maintaining international pressure and preventing Russian entities from using Canadian assets to circumvent sanctions. The seizure mechanism ensures compliance with Canada's foreign policy objectives and collective security measures.

This regulation provides temporary remission (refund) of steel surtax for goods in transit to Canada before August 1, 2025, and for specific steel goods imported after June 27, 2025, while repealing the previous remission order.

Temporary tariff relief creates regulatory complexity and administrative burden without addressing fundamental trade policy. The selective remission distorts market signals, creates compliance costs for importers, and perpetuates the underlying protectionist surtax that raises steel prices for Canadian manufacturers and consumers.

This regulation mandates methane emission controls for large Canadian landfills, requiring annual methane calculations using a government tool, extensive monitoring (monthly well checks, quarterly surface scans), restrictions on venting, and methane destruction via approved devices. It prescribes specific EPA methods adapted for methane detection and imposes detailed record-keeping and reporting obligations on operators.

The regulation imposes substantial compliance costs through prescriptive monitoring frequencies, government-mandated calculation tools, and equipment specifications that stifle innovation and burden operators. Property rights and tort law could address methane migration harm without micromanaging technical details, while carbon pricing would internalize environmental costs more efficiently. The unseen costs include reduced competition, stifled technological advancement, and resources diverted from productive uses to satisfy bureaucratic reporting requirements.

This regulation establishes Vessel Traffic Services (VTS) zones across Canadian waters and mandates reporting requirements for vessels entering, leaving, or operating within these zones. It requires sailing plans, position reports, final reports, and other reports for incidents (fires, collisions, defects, pollutants, etc.) from prescribed vessel classes based on size, cargo (pollutants/dangerous goods), and towing operations. It incorporates Radio Aids to Marine Navigation by reference and repeals previous VTS regulations.

Maritime navigation has significant negative externalities - collisions, spills, and environmental disasters impose costs on third parties and the public. VTS reporting requirements are a proportional, internationally-standardized means to mitigate these risks. The regulation implements Canada's obligations under the Canada Shipping Act and aligns with SOLAS, protecting lives, property, and the marine environment. Removing it would reintroduce information asymmetries that lead to preventable accidents with far greater costs than the compliance burden.

Regulations prohibiting certain toxic substances under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, with specific exemptions for laboratory use, manufactured items in transit, and authorized activities.

Creates excessive regulatory burden on manufacturers and importers, requires complex permit applications for substances with technically feasible alternatives, and imposes costly compliance requirements including accredited laboratory testing and five-year record keeping.

A regulation imposing a 25% surtax on imported goods classified under specific tariff items (mostly steel, metal products, and furniture), with exceptions for certain countries, goods for auto/aerospace manufacture, and utility wind towers west of Ontario-Manitoba, effective December 26, 2025.

Tariffs raise costs for Canadian consumers and businesses, suppress competition, invite retaliation, and misallocate resources toward inefficient domestic producers. Unseen harms include downstream job losses in manufacturing sectors using these inputs and reduced innovation due to protectionist incentives.

Time-limited regulation (until April 1, 2029) granting Canadian Forces veterans (honourably released after 3+ years service, with account created by Jan 18, 2024) eligibility to participate in advertised internal public service appointment processes as if they were current employees, while still needing to meet any designated group criteria.

This regulation creates a non-merit-based hiring preference that distorts public service labor markets, increases regulatory burden through special eligibility tracking and processing, and potentially selects less qualified candidates over more qualified ones. Government employment should be based solely on competence and performance, not veteran status. Any social obligation to veterans is better fulfilled through direct support (education benefits, tax incentives, training programs) rather than distorting hiring processes.

This regulation provides temporary exemptions from certain Canadian food safety labelling and advertising requirements for human milk fortifiers, infant formulas, and formulated liquid diets during shortages or risk of shortages, allowing importation and sale of products authorized by foreign regulatory authorities (US, UK, EU, Australia) that may not fully comply with Canadian standards.

This regulation creates a double standard that undermines food safety while failing to address the root causes of shortages. It allows products that don't meet Canadian safety standards to be sold to vulnerable infants based solely on foreign approval, creating unnecessary health risks. The solution to shortages should be removing regulatory barriers to domestic production and supply, not lowering safety standards for imported products.

This regulation establishes a comprehensive licensing and permitting system for entities handling controlled substances (narcotics, controlled drugs, targeted substances, restricted drugs). It defines who can legally possess, produce, package, sell, import, export, and destroy these substances, with detailed eligibility criteria, application requirements, security standards, personnel qualifications, and police background checks going back 10 years. It includes exemptions for certain healthcare professionals and law enforcement while imposing strict record-keeping and reporting obligations.

The regulation imposes excessive burdens on economic liberty through complex licensing, restrictive credentialing, and 10-year criminal record prohibitions that exclude rehabilitated individuals. It raises barriers to entry, increases costs, and favors established players—reducing competition and innovation. By severely restricting legal supply chains for controlled substances, it fuels black markets and criminal activity while treating adults as incapable of personal responsibility. Even if preventing diversion is a legitimate goal, this prescriptive, prior-restraint approach achieves it at an unnecessarily high cost to property rights, autonomy, and market efficiency. A lighter-touch system relying on liability, basic tracking, and enforcement against actual harms would be more consistent with free-market principles.

Regulation implements the Free Trade and Labour Mobility in Canada Act by establishing rules for recognizing provincial/territorial occupational authorizations (licenses, certificates) at the federal level, defining when requirements are duplicative, and setting conditions for federal recognition of provincial credentials to enable interprovincial trade and labour mobility.

Canadians would be worse off if deleted because it actively dismantles interprovincial trade barriers and credentialing obstacles that suppress labour mobility, increase costs, and fragment the national market. It achieves its objective in a way hard to replicate otherwise—by creating a formal legal mechanism for automatic recognition, it prevents a patchwork of duplicate licensing, reduces compliance burden, enables workers to move freely across provinces, and increases competitive pressure on jurisdictions to maintain high standards without protectionist barriers. Deleting it would re-create the very regulatory fragmentation that drives brain drain, housing shortages, and economic inefficiency.

This Order grants remission (waiver) of customs duties, excise taxes, and GST/HST on goods imported in connection with the 2026 FIFA World Cup in Toronto and Vancouver. It covers FIFA, the Canadian Soccer Association, the National Organizing Committee, sponsors, suppliers, media rights holders, and World Cup family members (athletes, officials). Remission applies to temporary imports for exclusive use, equipment for display, goods under $60 for free distribution or as gifts/awards, certified sports equipment donated to non-profits, and volunteer uniforms. Conditions include importation between July 1, 2025 and July 19, 2026, export or destruction by December 31, 2026, and claims filed within two years.

This regulation represents corporate welfare for a powerful international organization and its commercial partners at taxpayer expense. It creates an uneven playing field by exempting FIFA and its affiliates from duties and taxes that ordinary Canadian businesses must pay. The 'unseen' cost is borne by other Canadians who must make up the lost revenue while receiving no direct benefit. Government should not use the tax system to pick winners and subsidize private sporting events; this distorts markets and violates the principle of equal treatment before the law. The Order serves no legitimate public purpose and should be repealed in its entirety.

These regulations establish comprehensive security requirements for nuclear facilities and materials in Canada, including nuclear security plans, threat and risk assessments, personnel training and clearances, physical barriers, access controls, cyber security programs, and coordination with response forces. They differentiate between high-security sites (with Category I/II materials) and other nuclear facilities, with prescriptive requirements for security officer duties, equipment, and continuing training.

While preventing nuclear terrorism is a legitimate government function, these regulations employ a centralized, prescriptive approach that creates substantial compliance burdens without clear evidence of superior outcomes. The requirements mandate specific processes (annual reviews, detailed documentation, Commission-approved threat models, prescribed officer training) that could be achieved more efficiently through performance-based standards, liability frameworks, and market competition. The rigid 'design basis threat' dictated by the Commission prevents adaptive security innovation, while the extensive reporting requirements and specific training mandates create deadweight costs that do not directly improve security. A more effective approach would hold licensees strictly liable for breaches, require them to maintain insurance or bonding that forces internalization of risk costs, and allow them to develop tailored security solutions responsive to actual threats rather than bureaucratic specifications.

This regulation exempts Alberta from federal methane and VOC emissions regulations for the upstream oil and gas sector, based on an equivalency agreement with the provincial government. The federal regulations do not apply in Alberta, and the order terminates when the equivalency agreement ends.

Alberta has demonstrated capable provincial regulation that achieves the same environmental goals without federal interference. The equivalency agreement respects provincial jurisdiction and allows for more flexible, cost-effective implementation tailored to Alberta's specific circumstances while maintaining environmental protection standards.

Enables Indigenous groups with treaties or self-government agreements to access First Nations fiscal management provisions, including borrowing secured by other revenues and establishing financial management systems with oversight bodies like the First Nations Financial Management Board and First Nations Tax Commission.

Provides essential financial infrastructure for Indigenous governance, enabling access to capital markets and establishing accountability frameworks that would be difficult to replicate through other means. The regulation creates standardized processes for revenue generation, borrowing, and financial reporting that support economic development and self-determination.

Establishes differential premium system for Canadian deposit insurance, using risk-based assessment to classify financial institutions into categories based on financial health, compliance, and systemic importance, with premiums calculated accordingly.

Canadians would be worse off without this regulation as it ensures financial stability by incentivizing sound banking practices, protecting depositors through risk-based premiums, and maintaining the integrity of the deposit insurance system that prevents bank runs and systemic crises.