How to Trace the Legislative Evolution of a Statute

• Author: Susan Barker, Erica Anderson
• Pages: 149-172

149

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chapter seven

How to Trace the Legislative Evolution of a

Statute

A. BEFORE YOU START

If you have been asked to trace the legislative evolution and history

of a statute, it is not always necessary to start from scratch. Searching

court websites, WestlawNext Canada, or even Google might yield an

extant legislative evolution or history (or both) that you can use as a

jumping-o point for your own research. You might also want to look

at law reform commission reports, practitioner texts, or annotated

statutes. Although you should never rely wholly on research pre-

pared by someone else and would need to double check and update

the information provided, it sti might be useful to have an existing

document as a guide.

B. LEGISLATIVE EVOLUTION

Ruth Suivan’s denition of legislative evolution from her treatise

Suivan on the Construction of Statutes has a very specic meaning:

Legislative evolution: “the evolution of a legislative provision con-

sists of successive enacted versions from inception to the version in

place when the relevant facts occur.”1

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

LexisNexis, 2014) at 660.

150  Researching Legislative Intent

e Supreme Court of Canada has adopted Suivan’s denition

of legislative evolution in a number of cases. In Marche v Halifax Insur-

ance Co, for example, Bastarache J (in his dissent) states:

According to Professor Suivan, “[o]ne of the most eective ways of

establishing legislative purpose is to trace the evolution of legislation

from its inception, through successive amendments, to its current

form.”2

1) Tracing the Evolution of a Statute

To trace evolution of a statute or section of a statute (which is also

known as backdating), start by looking at the current statute and then

work your way backwards to its inception. Make note of any changes

to the statute and when those changes occurred. e information on

when the changes took place can later be used to locate the legislative

history of the statute.

2) The Source Reference

One useful tool for tracing a statute back is the source reference. For

federal and Ontario statutes the source reference appears at the end

of each section of the statute and provides citations to a the statutes

that have amended that section, either back to the most recent statute

revision or back to that section’s inception, whichever is more recent.

Citations for the source references foow a similar paern to con-

ventional citation but there are some dierences. Here is an example

from section 2 of the current federal Citizenship Act:

(2) For the purposes of this Act,

(a) a person is deemed to be born in Canada if the person is born

on a Canadian vessel as dened in section 2 of the Canada Ship-

ping Act, 2001, or on an aircra registered in Canada under the

Aeronautics Act and regulations made under that Act;

2 Marche v Halifax Insurance Co, 2005 SCC 6 at para 98 [Marche].