Regulators' Capacity Fund

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The RCF funding envelope that was available until March 2025 has been exhausted in the previous call-out (summer 2023). Thank you for your interest

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

(Click here to see a list of completed RCF projects and the associated case studies)

The following are projects that were supported by the RCF.

Department/Agency	Project Title	Project Description
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 - Australia, Canada, Singapore, Switzerland and United Kingdom review drug applications independently, and share files to collaborate. As regulators are repeating others’ work and due to differences in cloud policies of every country, this is done in a nonsynchronous way at this time. 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.
Health Canada (HC)	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.
Health Canada (HC)	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. In preparing complex regulations it is often easier to collect and monetize the costs to regulated parties than the benefits to the public.
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.
Natural Resources Canada (NRCan)	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 proposed by TC aims to identify and leverage best practices from other jurisdictions such as the US and Europe 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. This includes improving TC’s regulatory guidance through an informed and data-driven policy.
Transport Canada (TC)	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. Compared to Europe and Asia, the US and Canada have a self-certification model and deeply integrated of supply chains. As TC does not have dedicated vehicle cyber security authorities, a framework will help with future regulatory decision-making process.
Transport Canada (TC)	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. As Automated Driving Systems vehicles are evolving from traditional mechanical systems to software centric platforms, novel approaches to safety oversight are required. Starting with the digitalization of real-world driving environments, computer simulation test tools for automated vehicles will be examined to verify the accuracy of manufacturer’s test results for regulatory decision-making purposes.