Extrinsic Aids to Statutory Interpretation: Legislative Debates

• Author: Susan Barker, Erica Anderson
• Pages: 78-91

78

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chapter four

Extrinsic Aids to Statutory Interpretation:

Legislative Debates

A. EXTRINSIC AIDS

Extrinsic aids are generay dened 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 ocial House documents, includ-

ing the ocial reports of proceedings, also caed Hansard or referred

1 Ruth Suivan, Suivan on the Construction of Statutes, 6th ed (Markham, ON:

LexisNexis Canada, 2014) at 657.