[ELI5] In practice, what’s the difference of Policy, Regulation, and Law?
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As a civil servant in Canada, I can explain for me the practicalities of it as I do projects:
We talk casually about “Legs and Regs” – Legislation and Regulations. Then there is policy and procedure.
Legislation is the very high level rules passed by the legislature and cover the broad strokes of what needs to happen, and the penalties that can come from that legislation. These are the laws. These pieces of legislation also identify specific details that can be further refined by Regulation.
Regulations get put in place either by Ministers or sometimes by the Lieutenant governor, and within the boundaries of what is specified in the legislation, they can go into more detail about specifically what might happen in terms of how things are applied.
Policy is then developed at the staff level (and endorsed/approved by execs) to tell us how we implement or carry out the rules given to us by the Legs and Regs.
So, for example, a law or legislation might say “if you drive without a valid licence, you will need to pay a fine”. The Regulation might say “the fine for driving without a valid licence is $500 for the first offence, $750 for a second offence” and so on. Then the policy will say “A valid licence is a licence that is has not passed its expiry date, and has not been put under penalty by this authority, or is not under suspension”. Then the procedure might be “In order to determine if a licence is valid, check in this database, and to collect fines, use this other system to process the payment”.
We can change procedure as part of a project by ourselves, and it just requires signoff by a mid-exec. Policy takes a bit longer to change and will likely require a senior exec to sign off and undergo more review. Regulation will likely require the minister or cabinet to sign, so I’d better assume it’ll take at least a year to get that changed and if it’s something that affects businesses we’re only allowed to have it come in to force two days per year. If it’s legislation that needs to be changed then good luck, it’s not going to happen quickly and likely it’s going to be triggered top down from the political side rather than from the staff side for changes.
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