Browse regulations

Federal regulation governing the orderly payment of debts (OPD) program, a court-supervised debt consolidation system that allows debtors to consolidate debts and pay creditors pro rata over time under Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act authority

The 15% administrative fee extracted from payments adds unnecessary costs, court supervision creates delays and bureaucratic overhead, and the system crowds out more efficient private debt restructuring solutions. This government intervention distorts market incentives—creditors face suppressed returns while debtors may strategically avoid full consequences—and fails to justify its existence when existing contract law and bankruptcy courts already handle genuine defaults. The regulation artificially constrains supply of debt resolution services, increases costs to consumers, and creates moral hazard without addressing any market failure that voluntary agreements cannot solve.

Designates specific federal entities and territorial governments as parts of the public service, deeming their non-public-service employees as public servants under the Public Service Employment Act.

Unnecessarily expands the public service, inflating taxpayer-funded benefits and shielding these entities from competitive labor market pressures. This reduces efficiency, increases costs, and perpetuates government monopolies that could be better served by private alternatives. Canadians bear the hidden costs through higher taxes and reduced innovation.

These regulations govern construction and maintenance of electrical and communication lines crossing or near railways or other federally-regulated infrastructure. They require Commission permits, mandate compliance with Canadian Standards Association standards, require consent from affected parties, impose notice and inspection requirements, provide indemnification, and establish dispute resolution.

This regulation prevents real harms (safety risks, physical/inductive interference) affecting third parties. The coordination problem across infrastructure owners and potential holdout behavior makes purely private contracting inadequate. Industry-based standards provide objective safety criteria while limiting arbitrary discretion. Indemnification properly allocates risk to the party creating it. Repeal would likely increase safety incidents, interference disputes, and litigation, harming Canadians through reduced infrastructure reliability and potential accidents.

This regulation governs the sharing of utility poles between telephone, telegraph, electric power, and other corporations. It requires written agreements for joint use, prescribes mandatory technical standards for wire placement and clearances between conductors, allows parties to set their own liability terms, and binds only the consenting parties.

It imposes unnecessary federal control over voluntary private contracts, mandating rigid technical specifications that may not suit all contexts and discouraging innovation. The regulation creates compliance burdens, potentially raises costs for utilities (passed to consumers), and overrides market-driven standards that would emerge from contract law, insurance requirements, and industry consensus. The unseen cost is the erosion of private ordering and the deadweight loss of suboptimal, one-size-fits-all rules.

Regulation mandates minimum heights for telegraph and telephone wires over highways, public places, and private vehicular ways, adopting CSA Standard C22.3 No. 1-1970 for overhead systems, with exceptions possible via Railway Transport Committee.

Deletion would risk inconsistent wire heights, leading to vehicle collisions, power outages, injuries, and deaths. The CSA standard provides a uniform, industry-consensus safety baseline that protects third parties—an outcome unlikely to be achieved reliably through private contracts or liability alone given numerous overlapping infrastructure owners.

The Railway Safety Appliance Standards Regulations prescribe extremely detailed technical specifications for safety equipment on railway rolling stock, including exact dimensions, materials, and construction methods for hand brakes, running boards, ladders, handholds, steps, platforms, and uncoupling devices. The regulation includes phased implementation deadlines from the 1970s-1980s, reporting obligations, and different standards based on car types and build dates, with references to American Association of Railroad (A.A.R.) standards.

This hyper-prescriptive regulation imposes massive compliance costs while stifling innovation through rigid specifications that lock in obsolete technology. Railway companies have strong economic incentives—liability, operational efficiency, and reputation—to maintain safe equipment without government micromanagement. The extreme detail (e.g., exact inch measurements, specific bolt sizes) prevents adaptation to new materials and designs, creating barriers to market-driven safety improvements. Performance-based standards would achieve safety objectives more efficiently while enabling technological progress. The regulation's outdated 1970s-80s implementation schedule confirms its irrelevance.

Regulation governing bulk storage of liquefied petroleum gases (propane, butane, etc.) on railway rights-of-way. Prescribes detailed permitting requirements, precise minimum distances from tracks/buildings/property lines, mandatory construction standards (foundations, materials, testing), and specific equipment specifications. References outdated code editions (ASME 1956/1959/1962, NFPA 58 1958).

Imposes rigid, prescriptive standards that create barriers to entry, increase costs, and stifle innovation without improving safety over liability, insurance, and modern consensus standards. Mandatory approvals and specific distance requirements create unnecessary economic distortions in energy infrastructure. Outdated code references prevent adaptation to technological progress; performance-based standards and tort law would achieve safety more efficiently.

The Flammable Liquids Bulk Storage Regulations establish comprehensive safety requirements for the storage and handling of flammable liquids on railway property, including detailed specifications for tank design, location distances, piping systems, and emergency procedures to prevent fires and explosions.

These regulations prevent catastrophic fires and explosions that could kill people, destroy property, and cause environmental damage. The technical requirements for tank design, spacing, venting, and containment are essential for public safety in industrial settings.

All five sections of this regulation are marked as repealed by SOR/2014-181, section 8, indicating the entire regulation has been formally repealed and holds no current legal force.

The regulation is already repealed and therefore legally obsolete. It imposes no current costs or restrictions on Canadians, and maintaining any reference to it in regulatory codes would merely create confusion and administrative overhead.

The Canadian Agricultural Loans Act regulations establish a government-backed loan guarantee program for farmers, setting terms for loan purposes, interest rates, security requirements, default procedures, and fee structures to facilitate agricultural financing through commercial lenders.

This regulation creates a costly government intervention that distorts agricultural credit markets, subsidizes risk-taking by farmers and lenders, and imposes administrative burdens on financial institutions. The loan guarantee program artificially lowers interest rates and extends credit to marginal borrowers who would not qualify otherwise, leading to inefficient capital allocation and potential overinvestment in agriculture. The complex registration requirements, default procedures, and fee structures create significant compliance costs that are ultimately borne by taxpayers and legitimate borrowers. Market-based agricultural lending would better allocate capital based on actual risk assessment rather than political criteria, while reducing the moral hazard created when lenders know the government will cover 95% of losses.

Mandatory levy on Quebec wood producers for wood marketed in interprovincial and export trade, collected by the Syndicat des propriétaires forestiers (Commodity Board) to fund its operations.

Violates property rights by forcibly extracting funds from producers to finance a mandatory industry board. It creates a regulatory burden on interprovincial trade—the very barrier the ideology seeks to eliminate—and assumes producers cannot voluntarily fund services they value. The unseen cost is the distortion of market incentives and the entrenchment of collectivist decision-making over private contractual arrangements.

This document consists of sections 1-7, all marked as repealed under SOR/2014-293, section 11. It contains no operative provisions and serves only as a record of repealed sections.

Keeping this repealed document adds unnecessary complexity and confusion to Canada's regulatory framework. It wastes officials' and citizens' time and serves no legitimate purpose. The original provisions (whatever they were) are no longer in force; maintaining a list of repealed sections in active regulations is pure clutter.

This regulation establishes the Newfoundland Offshore Petroleum Resource Revenue Fund, which manages revenue sharing between federal and Newfoundland governments from offshore petroleum resources. It sets up a fund structure, defines credit timing for different revenue types, and establishes payment mechanisms to the provincial government.

This is a revenue sharing agreement between federal and provincial governments for offshore petroleum resources. Deleting it would create uncertainty about resource revenue distribution, potentially harming Newfoundland's ability to fund public services and infrastructure. The mechanism ensures predictable, transparent revenue sharing that supports provincial economic stability.

This appears to be a repealed federal regulation from Canada, with all sections marked as repealed in 2014 by chapter 13, section 92. The regulation had multiple parts and sections but no active provisions remain.

The regulation was already repealed in 2014, making it obsolete. Keeping repealed regulations creates unnecessary complexity in the legal code without providing any benefits to Canadians.

This regulation defines small cable transmission systems as those serving up to 2,000 premises in the same service area, with provisions for determining system units and exceptions for master antenna systems within larger service areas.

This regulation creates artificial distinctions in cable service provision that restrict market competition and prevent efficient service delivery. The 2,000 premises threshold and unit aggregation rules distort incentives for expansion and create regulatory complexity without clear consumer benefits.