Working visit to Canada by an Inter-Agency Delegation led by Justice Deputy Minister Dinh Trung Tung

08/10/2013
Working visit to Canada by an Inter-Agency Delegation led by Justice Deputy Minister Dinh Trung Tung
On September 28, an inter-agency delegation led by Deputy Minister of Justice Dinh Trung Tung began a two-week working visit to Canada to study and learn about the legislative process in this country. According to the agenda, the delegation would have working visits to the Federal Agencies such as the Ministry of Justice, the Supreme Court, the House of Commons, the Privy Council Office, Canada’s Bar Association and several Ontario Agencies such as the Ministry of the Attorney General, the Office of Legislative Counsel, the Cabinet Office, the Court of Appeals, the Law Committee, Law Society, the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing.

  On the first day of the visit, the delegation has worked with Mr. Patrick Monahan, Deputy Attorney General to discuss about co-operation in the legal field between Vietnam and Canada. Mr. Dinh Trung Tung said that the Vietnam legal system has gained significant achievements in the past 20 years. However, learning experiences from foreign countries having good legal systems, including Canada, to improve the current Vietnamese legal system is very important.  

Mr. Patrick Monahan highly appropriated the co-operation relation in the legal area between Vietnam and Canada in the past years and hoped that the co-operation will be more developed in the coming years. The delegation also studied and learned about the functions, tasks, powers and organizational structures of the Canada’s Cabinet and the Ontario’s Ministry of Attorney General, the assignment of tasks and responsibilities in legislative process, policy making and law making in Ontario and in the Ministry of the Attorney General.

Canada has an advanced legislative process. The divisions of legislative powers between the federal and provincial governments are specified in the Canada’s Constitution. At the federal level, the Legislature is the House of Commons and the Senate, have competence to issue laws to uniformly apply within countries concerning defense, immigration, foreign affairs, criminal, bank and currency. At the provincial/state level, the Legislative Council is the legislature, have competence to issue legal normative documents concerning affairs: health, education, civil rights, judicial administration, direct taxes, social services, local government. There are some affairs that both federal and provincial/state have competence to issue legal normative documents to regulate. In the case of dispute in competence to issue a legal document between the federal and provincial/state governments, the Supreme Court shall resolve the dispute. The Ministry of the Attorney General have an important role in the legislative process and participate in all stages of the process, from the stage of making policy proposal, drafting, voting, passing to implementing and supervising of the enacted laws. Each other Ministry have a legal division, headed by a permanent staff of the Ministry of the Attorney General. In Ontario, all laws and regulations are drafted by the Office of Legislative Counsel of Ministry of the Attorney General after the proposals for making those laws and regulations have been approved by the Cabinet. Such laws and regulations are drafted in coordination with the ministries that has proposed to make those legal instruments.

The delegation also have had working sections with the Ontario’s Office of Legislative Counsel on the legislative activities at the House of Commons and the Senate, including deliberation and passage of a bill. A bill that submitted to Parliament will subject to three readings. In this process, the bill can be revised according to the opinion of the Parliament’s Committees (the Standing Committee and the Special Committees) as well as opinions of the members of the Parliament. The bill will be revised by the Office of Legislative Counsel of Ministry of the Attorney General. In the 3rd reading, the members of Parliament will vote on the bill. After the Parliament passed, the bill will become law and take effect when Royal (Deputy Governor) assents. For several bills, the Cabinet shall detail the effective date of the enacted laws.

In the next meetings, the delegation would continue to study deeper issues related to the legislative process, consultant on the legislative process, Cabinet’s organizational structure and decision-making processes of Cabinet, consolidation of laws, the judge's role in the legislative process, the role and the legislative competence of local governments, implementation, and monitoring the implementation of the law.