Regulators' Capacity Fund

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The RCF funding envelope that was available until March 2025 has been exhausted. Thank you for your interest.

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Overview

The Regulators’ Capacity Fund (RCF) responds to calls from Canada’s business community, which has been vocal in its desire for regulators to give increased weight to economic and competitiveness considerations in the development and enforcement of regulations. From 2020-2025, the RCF supported 37 projects with over $14.2 million in funding.

To help regulators improve their capacity to incorporate economic, competitiveness, and resilience considerations in the design and implementation of regulations, the aims of the renewed Regulators’ Capacity Fund are to:

• Enhance the capacity of regulators to accurately assess economic impacts of regulatory proposals, including impacts on competitiveness at sector and aggregate levels;
• Enhance the capacity of regulators to design and administer regulations in a manner that accounts for economic and competitiveness impacts, within the context of their overall objectives; and,
• Enhance the capacity of regulators to incorporate learnings from the ongoing pandemic response and adapt to rapidly-evolving regulatory landscapes to facilitate a system that is better equipped to mitigate future risks and respond to unanticipated developments, especially those related to climate change and public health.

The RCF supports departments and agencies in undertaking projects or initiatives, ranging in scope, that contribute to the enhancement of regulatory capacity. This involves supporting initiatives that would help regulators carry out their functions in a way that is conducive to economic growth. These initiatives would ultimately contribute to enhanced regulatory competitiveness in or beyond their respective sectors.

Key Documents

RCF Progress Report Template RCF Final Report Template RCF Lessons Learned Report

Current Projects

For a list of completed RCF projects and their case studies, please see the Completed Projects page.

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) A plan to address Canada-specific data gaps on residue left over from drone-based pesticide application AAFC will lead a study to compare pesticide residue levels on crops applied using drones to traditional equipment that are approved for pesticide application. The results of the study will help determine the regulatory equivalency of drone-based applications to ground based and airplane-based applications to inform future regulatory decision-making.

Health Canada (HC) Access Consortium - Multinational Real-time collaboration for Health Regulators As part of the Access Consortium Project, five countries will review drug applications independently, and share files to collaborate. HC is aiming to further develop a proof-of-concept prototype that will allow all five international partners to collaborate and share information in a secure manner real-time. Food and Drug Industry Data Tools Health Canada is aiming to facilitate the preparation of additionally robust and defensible cost-benefit analysis. The project seeks to maximize its insights into material impacts on subsectors of HC’s industrial stakeholders by fully leveraging StatsCan’s Business Registry and developing a data collection tool (survey) to fill gaps in information that are identified as still outstanding. Willingness to Pay framework HC proposes to develop a framework by which to obtain the costs of collection of Canadian’s willingness to pay for the benefits of regulations to obtain additional valuable data for cost-benefit analysis.

Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) Streamlining the economic analysis requirements of the Canadian impact assessment process NRCan and the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada (IAAC) propose to lead an interdepartmental working group to develop guidance for project proponents regarding requirements and coordinate Government of Canada (GoC) review of the economic analysis under the Impact Assessment Act (IAA) and Information and Management of Time Limits Regulations. Mining activity tool to help permits for mining projects NRCan proposes to investigate the use of Rules as Code (RaC) to develop guidance material to help the mining industry navigate the permitting process. This guidance material needs to be developed in an automated way, be always up to date, consistent, accurate, and maintained with minimal effort.

Transport Canada (TC) Expanding operational capabilities of Canadian air operators in winter weather conditions This project aims to identify and leverage best practices from other jurisdictions to improve aviation requirements where the operational capabilities of Canadian air operators could be safely expanded in winter conditions to increase international alignment and competitiveness. Building a Canadian Framework for Vehicle Cyber Security Requirements to Support Alignment with International Regulations TC is aiming to develop a vehicle cyber security certification framework to support industry in demonstrating compliance with vehicle technical requirements that is aligned internationally. Road Safety and Vehicle Regulations TC is proposing a pilot study to demonstrate and validate a new approach using virtual test platforms required for motor vehicle safety oversight. Computer simulation test tools for automated vehicles will be examined to verify the accuracy of manufacturer’s test results for regulatory decision-making purposes.

Questions?

If you have any questions, please contact the CRI at: [mailto: cri-cir@tbs-sct.gc.ca cri-cir@tbs-sct.gc.ca].