Slashing regulations can lead to deadly disaster

In 2011, U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron initiated a Red Tape Challenge intended to slash much of his country’s regulatory apparatus.

Among the resulting changes was the elimination of regulatory protections around housing. And we recently saw the consequences of that choice for people far removed from the process of assessing the importance of safety regulations.

Grenfell Tower, a large social housing complex, was refurbished in 2015 after the U.K.’s housing regulations had been gutted. The building held only one escape for a 24-storey building housing hundreds of people, with no common fire alarms or sprinkler system.

Moreover, the building was newly covered with flammable cladding — rather than fire-protective cladding which would have cost a grand total of 5,000 pounds more. It’s not clear whether the cladding installed actually complied with the U.K.’s remaining laws, but there’s little doubt that the government’s mindset of reducing regulatory enforcement factored into the calculations.

This month, a fire tore through Grenfell Tower, engulfing residents before they had any hope of survival.

The death toll is now approaching 80, with authorities still discovering more casualties by the day. Among the dead are two activists who had tried to raise concerns about the building’s safety, but had been threatened with legal action for their impertinence.

Now they and dozens of others are dead — in no small part because Conservative politicians valued their lives less than the symbolic effect of reducing red tape.

And while Grenfell Tower may represent the most obvious recent example of the dangers of that mindset, Canadians shouldn’t think we’re immune to its effects.

In the wake of the Grenfell Tower catastrophe, it has been noted that Ontario has actually pointed to the U.K.’s Red Tape Challenge as an inspiration for its own similar program of systematic regulatory destruction. It remains to be seen whether Premier Kathleen Wynne will walk back her approval of Cameron’s model.

If Saskatchewan hasn’t followed the exact same path, it’s only because Premier Brad Wall was pushing the same destructive concepts before Cameron was ever in office.

Wall’s anti-regulation zealotry has manifested itself in different ways. The Saskatchewan Party government has undertaken an explicit “red tape reduction” process; it has passed legislation mandating ongoing reporting premised on the idea that regulations need to be under attack, and it has reinforced anti-regulatory messaging on an annual basis through “awareness” declarations.

The sum total of the rationale for that concerted campaign consists of pressure from business lobby groups, coupled with an ideological distaste for government acting in the public interest. And as with so much of what is done in the name of corporate centred “competitiveness,” the elimination of regulations has had no discernible effect on any substantial economic development.

It’s worth ensuring the regulations we have serve public purposes. But there’s a crucial difference between reviewing public protections to make sure that they work, and presuming they’re a “burden” to be eliminated whenever possible.

For too long, we’ve put ourselves at risk by accepting a government which holds the latter view. And we should insist that Wall and his ilk stop cutting “red tape” indiscriminately — before we too face the worst consequences of a regulatory system which falls apart entirely.