Researching Legislation

• Author: Ted Tjaden
• Profession: Faculty of Law and Faculty of Information Sciences University of Toronto
• Pages: 52-79

CHAPTER

3

RESEARCHING

LEGISLATION

A.

INTRODUCTION

Legislative

materials,

in the

form

of

statutes, regulations,

and

statutory

instruments,

are an

important source

of

law. While some citizens

may

not

realize

the

power

of

judge-made case

law to

affect

their rights, most

citizens

do

realize that statutes

and

regulations have

the

power

to

legal-

ly

affect

them. Created

by or

through elected politicians, legislation

consists

of

written rules that govern

or

prescribe

the

conduct

of the

cit-

izens

who

elected

the

government

officials.

Despite

the

importance

of

legislation

to our

legal system

and to

legal research, very

few

people

enjoy

conducting legislative research.

There

are

several reasons

why

legislative research

can be a

challenge:

Legislation

continues

to be

mired

in

19th century print technology,

replete with publishing delays, poor consolidation

of

amended pro-

visions,

and

awkward "Tables"

for

updating changes

to

legislative

text.

The

legislative process

is

still somewhat mysterious

to

most people,

involving

a

sense

of

back-room lobbying

and

various technical legisla-

tive

rules, such

as the

need

for

draft

legislation

to

pass three readings.

Legislation involves

a

fairly

obscure vocabulary

and

literature

unfa-

miliar

to the

uninitiated, including such concepts

or

terms

as

pro-

roguement,

Royal

Assent, proclamations,

and

Orders-in-Council

(these terms

are

explained later

in

this chapter).

52

Researching Legislation

53

Fortunately,

legislators

and

commercial publishers

are

improving access

to

legislation with

the

advent

of

computer

and

Internet technology.

Online legislative databases allow

for

keyword searching

and can be

kept

fairly

current. Quicklaw, WestlaweCARSWELL,

and

LexisNexis,

for

example, have legislation databases

for

both

federal

and

provincial

legislation (British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario,

and

other provinces)

that

are

usually current

and

consolidated

to

within

a few

days. Increas-

ingly,

Canadian

federal

and

provincial legislators

are

looking

to

make

electronic

versions

of

their

legislation

"official

versions"

for the

purpose

of

being accepted

in

court (ordinarily, courts have traditionally accept-

ed as

evidence

in

court only

official

Queen's Printer versions

of

legisla-

tion

as

official

versions).

The

federal

government,

for

example,

in the

Personal

Information

Protection

and

Electronic

Documents

Act1

amended

sections

19 to 22 of the

Canada

Evidence

Act2

and

added

provisions

after

section

31

of

that

Act to

provide that

the

electronic versions

of

legisla-

tion published

by the

federal

Queen's Printer

be

deemed

to be

official

versions

of

legislation

for the

purpose

of

court proceedings. Another

development

has

been

the

announcement

by the

Ontario government

of

its

ambitious

e-Laws project

in

which

it

proposes

to

publish

free

Internet access

to

Ontario laws that will eventually

be

current

to

with-

in 24

hours

and

that will allow

"point-in-time"

historical

research.3

Given

this improvement

in

online access

to

legislation,

is it

still

necessary

to

learn print legislative research?

Unfortunately,

since

online

legislative

databases

tend

to

provide only

current,

consolidated

"snapshots"

of the

law,

it

will still

be

necessary

to

conduct print legisla-

tive research

for

historical research, such

as

needing

to

confirm

the

state

of the law at a

period

of

time

in the

past.

In

addition,

not all

Cana-

dian provincial jurisdictions have moved

as

quickly

in

making their

legislation available online,

and for

these jurisdictions,

it is

still neces-

sary

to do

most legislative research

using

print resources. Finally, learn-

ing how to

conduct legislative research

in

print

can

provide valuable

context

for

understanding

what

is

being viewed online.

This chapter proposes that most legislative research

can be

success-

fully,

and

somewhat

enjoyably,

undertaken

by

following

the

steps

in the

legislative research checklist

set out

below:

1

S.C. 2000,

c. 5.

2

R.S.C.

1985,

c.

C-5.

3 See

online: E-Laws

.