Regulations

Governments around the world are reviewing the performance of regulatory processes, tools and outcomes. While analyzing potential regulatory impacts before new legislation is introduced (i.e., ex ante) is common practice, reviews of regulatory impacts after regulations have been implemented (i.e., ex post) are less common.

Such ex post assessments of regulatory impacts are carried out much less frequently than their ex ante counterparts for many reasons including the difficulty in untangling the specific impacts of a regulation from all the other potential influences in the economy and environment and problems in collecting information. Despite these challenges, ex post assessments can aid in better regulatory processes and design by identifying what works and teasing out unintended and undesirable outcomes.

IISD is working with Environment Canada to establish a systematic approach to conducting ex post analysis of the economic costs of environmental regulations.