Governments like to talk about making decisions faster, and for good reason. People waiting for a licence, an answer or an appeal aren't asking for more procedure. But administrative speed is a strange thing to celebrate without asking which steps are being taken away. Some forms duplicate work. Other formalities give someone a rare opportunity to explain why an institution's first account of their circumstances is wrong.
On October 21, Ottawa announced a new Cabinet directive requiring federal regulators to eliminate $2 in regulatory burden costs for every $1 introduced after the directive takes effect on December 31. That is a way of measuring the cost of developing federal regulations, not a finding that every existing rule is unnecessary. No obligation disappears merely because a new target has been announced. The dollar cost to an agency or business is important, although it is only one measure of a rule's value.
Consider a quite different proceeding before the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal. In Gonzales Burnside v. Organized Crime Agency of British Columbia, 2026 BCHRT 206, the employer argued that employment discrimination allegations dating back to 2020 had been filed too late. The Tribunal examined whether the alleged acts were similar in character and whether the gaps between them could be explained. It allowed the complaint to proceed as an arguable continuing contravention. The ruling was procedural. Nobody had yet established that the employer discriminated against the complainant.
The two developments don't share a legal framework, and the Tribunal's decision doesn't direct federal regulatory reform. Their juxtaposition nevertheless raises a question worth considering. Administrative time and expense are easy to count. The consequences of refusing to hear a relevant explanation can be much harder to measure. An organization might appear increasingly efficient because it closes files quickly, even as people affected by its decisions come to believe nobody is listening. That is a governance problem, not just a customer service problem.
The answer isn't to defend every layer of bureaucracy. Boards and regulators should ask what each requirement accomplishes. Does a document produce evidence necessary to a reliable decision, or merely repeat information already held elsewhere? Does an opportunity to respond help decision makers correct mistakes, or could another fairer and more accessible process achieve the same protection? In either case, actual experience should inform the assessment. Age alone doesn't make a rule valuable, and cost alone doesn't make it expendable.
Trust grows when institutions can explain what they decided and give affected people a meaningful opportunity to challenge mistakes. Quicker administration can be a worthwhile achievement, but it is narrower than fairer administration. Any serious effort to simplify procedure should be able to say how both will be measured.