Governments have three core responsibilities — To tax, spend and regulate. Over the years, there has been a wealth of commentary about the taxing and spending practices of governments, but regulation gets minimal attention.  While many governments have achieved high levels of transparency around their taxing and spending systems; the costs of developing and implementing regulatory regimes remains poorly understood and difficult to measure.  As the global financial crisis of 2007-8 or the more recent Volkswagen scandal serve to highlight, regulatory regimes can attract significant public attention …when they fail.

Carleton University’s Regulatory Governance Initiative (RGI) seeks to have a direct impact on enhancing the effectiveness of regulations. With a focus on regulatory policy, governance and management, the RGI adopts a holistic and problem-driven approach.  The idea of RGI’s Critical Conversation event series is to select a topic that is timely and significant, invite people from a variety of perspectives, backgrounds and interests into a room to have the type of conversation that pushes the boundaries of current thinking on policy and regulation – To have the discussions about regulation that we need to have, but rarely have the opportunity to do.  On April 12, 2016, the RGI hosted Critical Conversation: Reflections on Regulatory Regimes – Present and Future.

Event Agenda April 12 2016

Speaker Bios

Slide Deck – Reflections on Regulatory Regimes: Present & Future – by Dr. Robert Slater ‎and Michael Presley ‎

Slide Deck – Volkswagen Scandal: Implications for the Regulatory Regime – by Kassem El ‎Saddik

Slide Deck – Critical Conversation 2016 – by Vlasios Melessanakis ‎

Critical Conversation – Discussion Summary

Critical Conversation 2016 – Discussion Paper – Robert Slater & Michael Presley