CRI Supported Projects

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Completed CRI Supported Projects

The following are completed projects that were supported by the CRI’s Regulators’ Capacity Fund (RCF) or Regulatory Experimentation Expense Fund (REEF). If you are interested in any of the final project reports or contacting any of the project leads, please reach out to the CRI at cri-cir@tbs-sct.gc.ca.

(If you are interested in seeing a list of ongoing projects, please click either REEF or RCF and scroll to the table at the bottom of the page)

Contents

1. REEF Experimentation Reports
2. RCF Case Studies

(Project names are hyperlinked to their RCF case study or REEF experimentation report, as applicable)

REEF Experimentation Reports

Competition Bureau (CB) 🔹 Merger Intelligence The experiment as proposed by CB involves testing whether a created IT tool could help the Competition Bureau to leverage various sources of publicly available information to more efficiently and effectively identify anticompetitive mergers that may be avoiding antitrust scrutiny in Canada because they are not caught by the current regulatory regime for mandatory pre-merger notification. Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) 🔹 Testing a policy lab co-creation approach to the development of policy solutions This experiment as proposed by ECCC involves using a policy lab approach to engage Canadian stakeholders in co-developing new solutions to enhance supply chain transparency (SCT) for chemicals, in addition to developing recommendations for consumer labelling. Using a policy lab model is a novel approach for ECCC and the experiment is to test whether this approach can enhance the policy outcomes in the context of a complex issue affecting a regulatory program and implicating many industries and stakeholders. Innovation Science and Economic Development (ISED) 🔹 Enabling Regulators and Businesses to Ease Regulatory Burden through Digital Credentials and Wallets ISED proposed to partner with the Digital Identity Laboratory, an independent Canadian not-for-profit entity dedicated to providing services to the public and private sectors, to develop and pilot the bilingual digital credential educational approaches with regulators and other interested organizations. The objective of the experiment was to determine the best approach to increase trainees’ proficiencies and knowledge of Digital credentials and obtain information on how the training affects trainees buy-in toward this technology. Transport Canada (TC) 🔹 Electronic Personnel Licence Transport Canada implemented improvements to its information technology infrastructures and created a central licencing data repository creating the foundation necessary to support an Electronic Personnel Licence (EPL). Transport Canada also developed a prototype web based EPL that users can log into using GC Key to access a digital representation of their Transport Canada licensing information.

RCF Case Studies

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) 🔹 Analysis of Global Systems that Enable Domestic Meat Trade This project seeks to analyze relevant international regulatory systems (United States, European Union, Australia, etc.) containing features or programs which facilitate domestic trade of red meat. The purpose of the exercise would be to identify the key factors and their applicability to the Canadian context and to support the long-term objective of enhancing domestic trade without compromising food safety or international trade opportunities and obligations. 🔹 Analysis of Regulatory and Non-Regulatory Barriers to Domestic Red Meat Trade in Canada This project seeks to analyze regulatory and non-regulatory challenges to domestic trade of red meat in Canada with a view to informing a path forward to enhance economic growth opportunities in that sector. This would support the long-term objective of enhancing trade without compromising food safety or international trade opportunities and obligations. 🔹 Biogas Regulatory Navigation Study The project involves researching the regulatory barriers impacting agricultural biogas project development, highlighting necessary guidance or regulatory alignment needs, and identifying potential tools to aid SMEs in navigating regulations to enable them to achieve environmental and economic goals. It will also clarify if there is a role for the federal government to create a Pan-Canadian regulatory pathway for the agricultural biogas sector. 🔹 Co-Development Approach to Seed Regulatory Modernization (no report or case study available) This project seeks to co-develop modernized seed regulations from consensus-based, impartial recommendations derived from discussions with stakeholders, as well as accurately assess the cumulative economic impacts of the regulatory amendments. 🔹 Plant Breeders’ Rights Act/UPOV’91 Impact Study This project involves researching and quantifying the economic benefits derived from a strengthened intellectual property environment and greater opportunities for access to new plant varieties created by legislative amendments to Canada’s Plant Breeders’ Rights Act, which strengthened intellectual property protection to conform to the 1991 Act of the International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV’91). 🔹 Plant Breeders’ Rights Act/UPOV’91 Legal Analysis This project seeks to conduct a benchmarking legal study and analysis examining the plant breeders’ rights legislation of other countries who are contracting parties to the International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV). Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) 🔹 A Study for the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission on Artificial Intelligence Applications and Implications for the Nuclear Industry This project involves contracting expert advisory services to conduct a literature study and evaluation of the information required to demonstrate the safety of the use of AI in licensed nuclear activities, evaluate potential challenges for regulatory oversight and its use by regulators in inspection and compliance programs. 🔹 Support to enable improved costing of nuclear regulations and increase internal regulations costing capability This project involves undertaking a detailed costing study of an ongoing regulatory review and associated guidance, followed by the development of tools and training to help CNSC staff establish internal costing expertise. 🔹 Third-party Evaluation of the CNSC’s Regulatory Framework’s Readiness to Accept a License Application for a Fusion Reactor This project involves enlisting external support in order to review the CNSC’s regulatory framework and assess its readiness for fusion technology. If successful, this work would help CNSC successfully receive and process license applications for fusion reactors. Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) 🔹 Online Dispute Resolution Platform By implementing an online dispute resolution platform, this project will support timely, efficient, and cost-effective compliance and enforcement for both regulators and regulated entities under the new Pay Equity regime. Community of Federal Regulators (CFR) 🔹 Building Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) Capacity in the Government of Canada This project involves developing advanced-level cost-benefit analysis (CBA) training (i.e. developing a CBA certificate program in partnership with an academic institution) as well as developing a plan to guide the implementation of a CBA recruitment and retention strategy for the Government of Canada. Competition Bureau (CB) 🔹 Competition Assessment Toolkit After developing a prototype competition assessment toolkit that would enable regulators to assess the potential impacts their regulatory proposals would have on competition, the Competition Bureau will hold a workshop and targeted sessions to solicit feedback from regulators and revise the toolkit accordingly. Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) 🔹 Developing Foresight Capabilities Activities This project entails a suite of complementary activities to support capacity-building on foresight analysis within ECCC. This includes training of policy analysts, conducting a review of policy guidance documents to identify and incorporate foresight considerations throughout the policy cycle, and conducting applied hands-on foresight exercises with program areas. 🔹 Environmental Data is Accessible Timely, Useable, and Managed (EDATUM) – Business Case ECCC will develop the business case for a broader project which aims to create multiple operational solutions including a Document Portal to enable electronic regulatory reporting and document submission for all submissions to ECCC. 🔹 National Pollutant Release Inventory (NPRI) – Bulk Upload and Data Verification Tool The NPRI collects and publishes information on releases, disposals and transfers of over 320 pollutants from over 7,500 facilities across Canada. This project will allow facility owners or operators to submit their data more rapidly, efficiently, and accurately by developing an alternative to the presently required manual data entry. Specifically, this project involves developing a tool that would enable the submission of all data points in one file as well as provide quality control verification. 🔹 Regulatory Discovery Tool The project aims to develop and implement a Regulatory Discovery Tool to improve access to information on federal regulations. This involves conducting consultations to identify the needs of regulators and stakeholders, identifying and collecting regulatory metadata, and ultimately developing a public-facing, web-based, searchable Tool. 🔹 Regulatory Standardization and Rules as Code Research Project This project aimed to analyze ECCC’s regulations and regulatory reports to develop a template and methodology for new regulations and associated reporting requirements with the intent of standardizing terminology and requirements. It also proposed to develop criteria to determine which regulations are suitable for rules as code (RAC) and ways to incorporate RAC principles in the drafting of regulations. Health Canada (HC) 🔹 Analyzing Incentive Models to Support Pediatric Medicine Development and Submission to Canada This project seeks to analyze the success and/or gaps of Canada’s existing pediatric incentives provided under Section C.08.004.1 of the Food and Drug Regulations (FDR), in order to inform the development of new incentive models that will be used to support the implementation of a new pediatric provision in the FDR. To supplement this work, this project also strives to obtain industry feedback and insights on incentive models that would be meaningful to them. Innovation Science and Economic Development (ISED) 🔹 Centralized Service for Enabling Regulators to Issue and Consume Digital Credentials The project would establish a prototype centralized service for issuing and verifying digital credentials and test it with regulators and businesses. Findings would help to inform future work on Canada’s Digital Trust Infrastructure, such as piloting the centralized service for issuing and verifying digital credentials across regulatory regimes. 🔹 Using Conformity Assessment to Test AI SCC will lay the groundwork for a prototype SCC-accredited third-party conformity assessment program to test artificial intelligence in Canada by securing partnerships with stakeholders (i.e. regulators, SME AI developers, and Conformity Assessment Bodies) and developing prototype requirements. National Research Council of Canada (NRC) 🔹 Performance-Based Codes Through a targeted engagement with the research community, the code development community, and the engineering community, this project will identify knowledge gaps and perform research to investigate the feasibility and inform the decisions on the development and introduction of a new performance-based compliance path in the future editions of the National Building Code. Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) 🔹 Exploring the Use of Technology to Streamline Exploration to Production for Mining The current approval process for mining projects is complex and inefficient, with the resulting burden having significant negative impact on industry and challenging the delivery of the regulatory regime. This project involves undertaking various activities in order to identify a digital tool that would streamline the approvals process for mining projects, followed by implementation and adoption of the identified tool. 🔹  Risk-based Inspection Planning Web Application To support the administration of the compliance inspection and restoration program under the Explosives Act administered by NRCan, this project will develop an inspection planning web application to create more efficient workflows, increase regulatory transparency, and ensure that regulations do not impede competitiveness of stakeholder industries. Standards Council of Canada (SCC) 🔹 Modernizing the Monitoring Standards in Regulation Tool This project involves designing a modernized tool to monitor standards referenced in federal regulations, increase the capacity of regulators to access these standards, and help address the issue of outdated references to standards. Transport Canada (TC) 🔹 Cumulative Regulatory Impact Analysis (CRIA) and Portal This project involves developing and implementing a cumulative regulatory impact analysis framework to analyze the impact of transportation regulations on different industry sectors; this could ultimately support the establishment of an online portal that would make information on cumulative regulatory impact publicly available and searchable. 🔹 Establishing novel testing methodologies to evaluate the safety of new vehicle technologies and support road safety regulatory design To inform future regulation-development around new vehicle technologies, such as connected and automated vehicle safety technologies, this project would develop virtual simulation-based testing to assess new validation methods for emerging vehicle technologies, conduct physical testing of advanced vehicle technologies.