OTTAWA - A backbench Liberal MP thinks the government should adopt a variation
of the old pizza delivery slogan -- 30 minutes or it's free -- when it comes to the amount
of time it takes to evaluate new products coming to market.

Roy Cullen's private member's bill aims to force the federal government to be more
accountable for the estimated $2-billion in user fees it collects from businesses each
year.

He's managed to convince a surprising number of fellow MPs he's right. The bill has
been approved by the House of Commons finance committee and is scheduled for a
final vote in the House this autumn, which is further than most private member's bills get.
If passed into law, bureaucrats would have to justify increased fees, give companies a
venue for complaints other than the department that set up the fee in the first place, and
reduce their charges if they fail to meet deadlines.

"The fees are priced by monopolies with very little accountability or scrutiny," he said in
an interview. "My bill is out of frustration. The process isn't working."

The government began in the mid-Nineties to charge fees that can run into the hundreds
of thousands of dollars for approvals of drugs and other federally regulated products
from pacemakers to pesticides. The move, part of the attempt to eliminate the deficit,
was supposed to be accompanied by service guarantees.

But the government simultaneously laid off thousands of civil servants, handing business
the double whammy of increased cost and decreased service. It now takes twice as
long to approve a new drug in Canada as it does in the European Union or the United
States, and 1,100 days to evaluate a new "priority" pesticide, for which the government
charges $180,000. For these pesticides the waiting time has increased 171% between
1998 and 2001, and is twice as long as in the United States.

In another case, the government charges $200,000 to evaluate new substances destined
for the chemicals business, but as soon as a new substance is approved anyone can
market it, according to Don Moors, spokesman for the coalition of businesses pushing
for changes. This charge acts as a penalty for being first to market, he said.

 

 

The business groups say they don't mind paying for service -- in fact, they'd be willing
to pay more if they were guaranteed reasonable turnaround by government and there
were penalties for non-compliance.

"They're not prepared to pay more when it's a bottomless pit and there's no assurance
of results. They're prepared to pay more if they are guaranteed performance," Mr.
Cullen said.

It's not as though businesses can take their products elsewhere to get approval, Mr.
Moors said.

"We're a captive client base for them," he said.

Mr. Cullen's bill would require departments that want to charge a new fee, or raise an
existing one, to benchmark it against the country's major trading partners. As well, if a
department overshoots its timeline to complete the work by more than 10%, it would
start to lose its fee on a sliding scale.

"In countries that have done that, like Australia and to some extent Britain and the
United States, the performance standard is met," Mr. Cullen said.

 

"I want there to be more accountability and more involvement by Parliamentarians,"
who under the bill could review fees.

Right now departments set performance standards but rarely meet them and face no
penalty for missing. The Treasury Board Secretariat, which sets these rules, says it is
working on its own changes and does not support the bill.

"The substantial changes it would make to the existing approval process ... appear to
have a number of unforeseen consequences," said spokesman Mario Baril.

Consequences could include conflicts between cabinet committees, which approves
fees, and backbenchers who might want to review them, he said.