Annex 1. The Uniform Law Conference of Canada Drafting Conventions
| Author | John Mark Keyes/Wendy Gordon |
| Pages | 145-160 |
The Uniform Law Conference of
Canada Drafting Conventions
Report of the Committee Appointed to Prepare Bilingual Legislative
Drafting Conventions for the Uniform Law Conference of Canada
(Majority Report)
Adapted – August
Introduction
e history of the Canadian Legislative Drafting Conventions and
the history of the Uniform Law Conferences are so intertwined as
to be virtually inseparable. At its first annual meeting in , the
Conference of Commissioners on Uniformity of Laws through-
out Canada (as the Uniform Law Conference was then known)
appointed a committee to prepare a set of rules for legislative draft-
ing for the Conference. e committee’s report was adopted at the
second annual meeting in .
In , a committee consisting of Erich H. Silk of Ontario and
J.P. Runciman of Saskatchewan was appointed to revise the
rules. is committee’s report was received and adopted in .
In , the Saskatchewan Commissioners were asked to revise the
rules once again. e report of E.C. Leslie and J.P. Runciman was
adopted in . e revised rules were included in a pamphlet that
DRAFTING, INTERPRETING, AND APPLYING LEGISLATION
was published by the Conference in under the title Uniformity
of Legislation in Canada — An Outline.
e current conventions and commentaries grew out of the work
of the Legislative Drafting Workshop (the forerunner of the Legisla-
tive Drafting Section), which first met in . After several years of
intensive work, particularly on the part of Glen Acorn of Alberta, the
present drafting conventions were adopted in . Arthur Norman
Stone of Ontario and James Ryan of Newfoundland were appointed
to prepare the commentaries. eir report was adopted in . (e
Conventions have been amended twice, in and .)
e current conventions, like all their predecessors, were adopted
in English only and applied only to English drafting. When the
Conference began to adopt its uniform legislation in both French
and English, ocial drafting conventions applicable to both lan-
guages became necessary. Among others, Gérard Bertrand, Claude
Bisaillon, Alain-François Bisson, Alexandre Covacs, Bruno Lalonde,
Bernard Méchin and Louis-Philippe Pigeon devoted time to the
issue. A draft French document was presented to the annual meet-
ing in , but was not adopted.
By it was clear that it was neither practical nor realistic to
have separate drafting conventions for French drafting and English
drafting, each devoting no attention to the rules applicable to the
other ocial language. Consequently, the annual meeting in Win-
nipeg appointed a committee to prepare bilingual drafting conven-
tions. is committee was to report in , but soon realized that
such a major task could not be completed in one year.
e proposed drafting conventions and commentaries set out in
this report are based both on the draft French document mentioned
above and on the Conference’s existing English drafting conven-
tions and commentaries. e members of the committee are grateful
for the invaluable work of their predecessors.
e conventions set out in this report were prepared primar-
ily by Cornelia Schuh, Donald Revell and Michel Moisan, all of
the Oce of the Legislative Counsel in Ontario with significant
input from Peter Pagano of Alberta, Michel Nantel of Manitoba,
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