The Dark Side of Permit-by-Rule

By Gord Miller Thirty years ago I was a manager in the Ontario Public Service. The government of the day became obsessed with reducing ‘red tape’. By that they meant strict, slow, and overly complex official rules or paperwork. Committees were struck. Initiatives were imposed. But somehow the bureaucracy muddled along and the problems that frustrated the legislators continued for years. That changed about 15 years ago.

Political staff at the Ministry of Natural Resources discovered ‘Permit-by-Rule’. Basically, under this system if someone needs authorization from the ‘Minister’ under a law or regulation to do something on public land including the lakes and rivers, they could just do it without a documented approval if they just followed the rules. They began implementing it with simple things like rebuilding cottage docks and it seems to have worked. There was no need to send a staff member out to have a look at the situation. People are basically honest and they were to keep records of what was done.

The process has been expanded to larger and more significant things since. Presently the Ministry is consulting the public on changes to the Public Lands Act and Crown Forest Sustainability Act regulations. It sounds like further efficiencies but the difference here is that these changes will apply to activities further into remote areas of the commercial forest where few people go.

The problem is that Permit-by-Rule is efficient if somebody checks the work some of the time just to make sure the public interest is protected. These checks are not required all the time, just occasionally, over the years. Otherwise how does the regulator know it is working like intended? How can they find out if the rules can be improved or even if they are still necessary? 

What is happening is that the removal of a requirement to inspect gives the Ministry the leeway to reduce the staff. And, those employee cuts become the priority for head office. Over time there is no one to even occasionally check and the expertise of staff to access the situation disappears. The irony is that previously existing staff expertise and field experience was probably what was tapped in order to write the rules in the first place. 

So this is the point that must be made. It is good to have the streamlining and ‘red tape reduction’ to keep things moving apace, but the capacity and expertise of MNR staff to protect our public natural resources must be maintained!