FINA Committee Report

RECOMMENDATIONS

Recommendation 1:

The Committee is concerned that the upcoming Treasury Board review of cost recovery, while dealing with important questions of implementation, will not be sufficiently broad in scope. Therefore, the Committee recommends that a Committee of Parliament conduct a government-wide study of the Cost Recovery and User Charge Policy to evaluate both its benefits and costs. This should serve as the basis of any policy reform.

Recommendation 2:

That information on user charges be made easily available to all interested parties. It should include the formula used to determine the user charge, an indication as to whether it is a mandatory charge, whether it is a business charge, the amount of revenue it generates, and the performance promised by each user-charge program. The estimated public/private benefit split should be included, as well as its justification.

Recommendation 3:

Fee revenues should be published annually, with the publication of the budget.

Recommendation 4:

More central guidance is needed in the implementation of the Cost Recovery and Charging Policy. Specifically, stricter guidelines for determining public/private benefits should be put in place. This will help assure that programs with user charges are not starved of general tax revenues, which represent the public investment in this activity.

Recommendation 5:

Uniform standards should be established by Treasury Board to be applied by all departments and agencies. Deviations from those standards must be justified by the departments and agencies.

Recommendation 6:

An open, clear and independent appeal process for those affected by user charges is essential to the well-functioning of any cost-recovery policy. Thus, the Committee calls on the government to create an explicit appeal process and to set up a third-party Ombudsman to deal with user-charge complaints.

Recommendation 7:

Since user charges are similar to taxes, greater scrutiny is required. This cannot be left to individual government agencies. All new user charges, and changes to user charges, should therefore be subject to scrutiny by a parliamentary committee and adopted only if approved by the committee. This would aid accountability and assure that only appropriate fees are implemented. Parliament should also re-examine existing charges to ensure that they are well designed and well implemented.

Recommendation 8:

The Committee recommends that Treasury Board state explicitly what is required in business impact assessments and verify that they are being conducted by the departments. Wherever possible, international comparisons should be made.

Recommendation 9:

The Committee recommends that the government-wide review of user charges examine (1) how well user charges approximate efficient pricing; and (2) whether cost recovery has resulted in underfunding (from general revenues) of cost-recovery sections and overfunding of others. It should address such issues as mandatory user charges, performance standards and the treatment of public/private benefits with the goal of making the Policy more explicit in its requirements. More specific and enforceable guidelines should be developed to aid in the determination of pricing for voluntary and mandatory services.

Recommendation 10:

Where possible, fees should be reduced if service commitments are not met.

Recommendation 11:

Other enforcement mechanisms should also be considered such as alternative service providers and the use of international standards. Governments have reformed their approach to regulation by replacing some command and control regulations with market-based regulations.

Recommendation 12:

That the government set up a red-tape commission in order to evaluate and streamline regulations. It would conduct an examination of existing regulations to determine if they are still appropriate. Those that are not would be re-written, or deleted entirely. Further, the commission would establish guidelines for the implementation of future regulations. It would be guided by the goal of reducing the regulatory burden on the Canadian economy.