Six Canadian experts in policy development and legislative drafting travelled to Vietnam in March to participate in various workshops and meetings in support of each of the four components of the National Legislative Development project: strategic planning, policy analysis, legislative drafting and coherence and systemization of laws.
- Strategic planning: Maureen Maloney, the former Deputy Minister and Deputy Attorney General of B.C., and Andrea Strom, former Assistant Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Attorney General of Ontario, participated in roundtable discussions with the Vietnamese Ministry of Justice on the development of the legal system, and planning principles in state management of legislative development.
- Policy analysis: Ms. Strom met with the Vietnamese Institute of Legal Science to discuss the planning for the rollout of the policy development course being developed by the NLD project. Support was also provided by Joseph Reynaud, a partner at Stikeman Elliot LLP's Montreal office who is currently the Chair of the Quebec Branch’s Bankruptcy and Insolvency Section. Mr. Reynaud presented at a workshop on regulations on corporate bankruptcy involving foreign parties.
John Gregory, former Counsel with Ontario’s Ministry of the Attorney General, was deployed in support of the project’s role as a provider of capacity-building in policy development and policy appraisal. Mr. Gregory participated in workshops on policy appraisal in Hanoi and in Ho Chi Minh City, as well as in a seminar by the Institute of Legal Science in Nghe An aimed at collecting expert feedback on policy development to feed into discussions on developing specific policy handbooks for local governments.
- Legislative drafting: An equally important component of the project is to strengthen our partner capacity in legislative drafting. The project has developed a Legislative Drafting Handbook and designed a legislative drafting course. Lionel Levert, former Chief Legislative Counsel, Department of Justice Canada, and Dale Dewhurst, Director of the Legislative Drafting Program of the Athabasca University, travelled to Hanoi to deliver the training-of-trainer course on legislative drafting.
- Coherence and systematization of laws: John Gregory also met with the Director General of the Post-review Bureau to further discuss a handbook which will provide guidance on the post-review process and help maintain or build the quality of the post-review work.
See the website for more information about the NLD in Vietnam project.