Ordinary Meaning

• Author: Ruth Sullivan
• Profession: Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa
• Pages: 49-61

49

CHAP TER 3

ORDINARY MEANING

A. ORDINARY ME ANING IS PRESUMED

The starting point of every interpretative exercise is determining the

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

says the words of an Act are to be read in t heir ordinary, gramm atical

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

competent language user upon reading the tex t.

In practice, the ordina ry meaning is presumed to be the meaning

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

it should be adopted by the court. This presumption is the starti ng

point of interpretation because it ref‌lects the process by which readers

respond to any text. As Frederick Bowers writes:

Our f‌irst ass umption in reading t he words of any text is t hat the

author is using them i n their ordina ry sense, an d only if, after read-

ing some way into the tex t, we have a growi ng suspicion that he i s

using words in a dif ferent from ordinary sense, w ith each succeeding

word systematical ly tending in the same direction, do we ret race our

steps and start to i nterpret thos e words anew.1

1 F. Bowers, Linguistic Aspects o f Legislative Expression (Vancouver: University of

British Columb ia Press, 1989) at 116. See also s. 2 of the Drafting Conventions of

the Uniform Law Confere nce of Canada, advisin g drafters that “[an] Act should be

written si mply, clearly and conc isely, with the required degre e of precision, and