Hon. Pamela Wallin: Senator Gold, many of us were relieved to see the British Parliament’s honest review of their process of withdrawal from Afghanistan, admitting it was a disaster and a betrayal of Afghans.

We, on the other hand, have suggested we could have acted with “greater prudence.” That would be to risk painful understatement. Our diplomats fled, Afghans were misled, abandoned and had their documents destroyed — not to mention their homes, families and lives — and some were left to be murdered by the Taliban. Not only did the evacuation fail, but so too has the transition and resettlement.

We have a plane landing tomorrow with a few hundred more Afghans. Why can we not get on top of this and do what we are morally obligated to do, which is to provide safe passage for those who protected and served our military?

Senator Wallin: Senator Gold, we are alone among our allies for not carving out an exemption for charitable work so that payments, direct or indirect, to Afghans do not violate the Criminal Code because we are somehow dealing with a terrorist state. Are we carving out an exemption or making a necessary change to the anti-terrorism law so that this situation can be avoided? What specifically are we doing?

Hon. Pamela Wallin moved the adoption of the report.

She said: Honourable senators, as per rule 12-23(4), I wish to provide brief remarks on the Banking, Trade and Commerce Committee’s report on Bill S-6, An Act respecting regulatory modernization.

Three changes were made to the bill. First, the committee voted against Part 6, which proposed amendments to the Pest Control Products Act. The government requested, and the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry agreed, that Part 6 should be removed from the bill as Health Canada is currently conducting consultations regarding the modernization of that statute.

Second, two amendments were made to Part 8, which proposed amendments to the Department of Citizenship and Immigration Act and the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. These amendments would incorporate suggestions made by the Privacy Commissioner to the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology to clarify that there are written agreements in place that guide the exchange of information between Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada and other entities. Officials indicated that having a written agreement is currently a policy requirement, but amendments would codify this requirement in law.

Colleagues, overall, the committee found that our time to look at Bill S-6 was too short. During the Banking Committee’s pre‑study of the bill, our non-governmental witnesses were dissatisfied with the limited or non-existent consultation on the proposed regulatory changes directly affecting them.

During the Banking Committee’s study of the full bill, other committee chairs who were assigned pre-studies of the bill testified before the committee. They shared similar sentiments from their witnesses on the limited consultation process and on the short amount of time their committees were given to consider their divisions of the bill.

Overall, colleagues, we believe that the regulatory modernization review process must occur differently. That being said, based on the testimony heard, the committee still supports the overall intent of Bill S-6 and believes that regulatory modernization of legislation must occur more quickly and on a much wider scale than what was proposed in the bill.

Our committee suggests that the government consider the following measures in order to improve and accelerate federal regulatory modernization: introducing an economic and competitive lens for regulations; measuring the quantity and overall cost of regulations; setting targets for regulatory reduction that apply to all federal legislation, regulations and policies and examining whether certain streamlined measures that were introduced during COVID-19 should be continued.

We believe that these are important steps to undertake immediately, especially given that the government has signalled their intent to undertake this type of regulatory modernization on an annual basis. Thank you.