Extrinsic Aids to Statutory Interpretation: Legislative Debates
Author | Susan Barker, Erica Anderson |
Pages | 78-91 |
78
chapter four
Extrinsic Aids to Statutory Interpretation:
Legislative Debates
A. EXTRINSIC AIDS
Extrinsic aids are generay dened as any source beyond the actual
text of a statute or regulation that can be used to aid statutory inter-
pretation.1 Legislative evolution and legislative history are the two
types of extrinsic aids to statutory interpretation that are the focus
of this guide. While legislative evolution is restricted to the text of a
bi or statute and changes to that bi or statute, legislative history
casts a much wider net and can include the many kinds of extrinsic
aids, documents, and records, for example, that surround the bi’s
evolution.
B. LEGISLATIVE DEBATES HANSARD
A critical component of compiling a legislative history is locating
what has been said about a bi in Parliament. Records of what was said
about a bi, when it was introduced, why it was amended, and its dif-
ferent stages are captured in various ocial House documents, includ-
ing the ocial reports of proceedings, also caed Hansard or referred
1 Ruth Suivan, Suivan on the Construction of Statutes, 6th ed (Markham, ON:
LexisNexis Canada, 2014) at 657.
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