Public Consultations

The law library team at my firm spends a good chunk of time monitoring legislation. It is our role to alert our colleagues, and in some cases our firm clients directly, with information about new legislation and changes to existing legislation. We like to be proactive so we also do our best to chase down “what is coming down the pipe”.

Rumours, innuendo, a couple of very good Alberta political watch newsletters and, increasingly, public consultations.

Public consultations are a way for government to ask before creating complex legislation that might be difficult to implement or enforce without significant voluntary compliance. It is also an excellent opportunity to say, “we asked, you answers, we listened” and also “we asked, you said nothing, we implemented”.

If you are in Alberta, you may want to comment on the latest public consultation: a review of the Occupational Health and Safety Code.

As I looked at this particular consultation, I noticed something new – or new to me. This consultation is also being used as an opportunity to say, “pay attention to this new change that we have to do to support global harmonization” and tell us what you think. This is among the consultation surveys:

As a regulation, the OHS Code isn’t debated in the Legislature. It affects everyone in my province. This is not the beginning of consultation on the code as the news release soliciting feedback explains.

I think that public consultation is a very clever way to both ask the question: Will this work? and answer the question: Does industry know that this is happening?