Preparing for disaster – could Canadian businesses be legislated to develop Business Continuity Plans?

In today’s corporate world with its associated risks and potential problems to a businesses survival, there is very little legislation that relates back to companies having a business continuity program in place.

In other countries around the world, legislators are moving to impose rules and regulations that would mean that companies would have to develop and implement business continuity programs. These future rules and regulations would be based on existing standards such as the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 1600 and others.

The NFPA 1600 standards define business continuity as “an ongoing process supported by senior management and funded to ensure that the necessary steps are taken to identify the impact of potential losses, maintain viable recovery strategies and recovery plans, and ensure continuity of services through personnel training, plan testing and maintenance.”

The United States House of Representatives presented a bill in August 2007 that was signed into law that encourages the use of business continuity and disaster recovery standards for the private sector. This law specifically cites the NFPA 1600 code.

Will Canadian legislators follow suite? If they don’t will any Canadian company doing business with the US be required to show that they have a business continuity plan in place? I don’t know, but I do believe that if the US and other countries governments are moving in this direction, it may be of benefit for Canadian companies to begin planning and developing their business continuity plans now to stay ahead of the curve.

An article at http://www.forbes.com/opinions/2008/01/16/disaster-preparedness-companies-oped-cx_slw_0117disaster.html talks about this in a bit more detail.