Ordinary Meaning

• Author: Ruth Sullivan
• Pages: 59-72

59

CHA PTER 4

ORDINARY MEANING

A. ORDINARY MEA NING IS PRESUMED

The starting point of every interpretative exercise is determi ning the

“ordinary meani ng” of the text. This is what Driedger means when he

says the words of an Act are to be read in t heir ordinary, grammatic al

sense. It is the meani ng that spontaneously comes to the mind of a

competent language user upon reading t he text.

In practice, the ordinar y meaning is presumed to be t he meaning

intended by the legislature, and in t he absence of a reason to reject

it, it should be adopted by the court. This presumption is the starting

point of interpretation because it ref‌lects t he process by which readers

respond to any text. As Frederick Bowers writes:

Our f‌irst ass umption in reading the word s of any text is that the au-

thor is using the m in their ordinar y sense, and only if, after reading

some way into the text, we h ave a growing s uspicion that he is using

words in a different from ord inary sense, with e ach succeeding word

systematica lly tending in the same direction, do we ret race our steps

and start to inter pret those words anew.1

In keeping with thi s basic principle, drafters normally rely on or-

dinary me aning when they draft legi slation, and readers are therefore

1 Frederick Bower s, Linguistic Aspects of Legislative E xpression (Vancouver: Uni-

versity of Brit ish Columbia Press, 1989) at 116.