Citation of Canadian legislation

The purpose of a citation is to allow the reader to understand the source of the legislative principle being cited, and to find the law in question.

[1] The Canadian citation system covers the primary laws enacted by the Parliament of Canada and the provincial and territorial legislatures.

The format for citations is generally similar across Canada, but there are some differences in particular cases.

Canadian statutes were originally published solely in book form, so statute citation methods have traditionally been based on the physical book in which the statutory provision can be found.

It has been adopted by a number of Canadian law journals and courts as the standard guide.

[4] Although similar to the rules set out in the McGill Guide, it differs in points of detail.

[6] The Constitution of Canada is made up of over thirty different enactments, from various sources.

[7] The two enactments which are most frequently cited are the Constitution Act, 1867 and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

[11][12] The basic elements for a statute citation will generally be similar across Canada, although there are some variations amongst jurisdictions.

The statute citation system for each jurisdiction will reflect these differences in legislative practices.

The short title is given in the first section: "This Act may be cited as the Criminal Code.

For example, Parliament was continuously in session from 1974 to 1976, so the annual statute for that period is actually cited as "SC 1974-75-76".

The former practice was to use the regnal year of the monarch as the date for the annual statute volumes.

The practice in older statute volumes was to use simple numeric chapter numbers, but the newer practice is to use alpha-numeric chapter numbers for principal acts, based on the title of the statute, which facilitates sorting by title.

Whilst most provinces follow the federal model, Ontario uses a decimal in place of a hyphen.

Although statutes may be sub-divided into parts or titles, the citation normally gives a pinpoint cite to the section number.

The McGill Guide, which is itself fully bilingual, should be consulted for the French citation styles.

In the federal Parliament, bills introduced in the House of Commons are designated "C-", followed by the number, whilst bills introduced in the Senate are designated "S-", followed by the number.

Bills introduced in the unicameral provincial legislative assemblies are simply given numbers.

In the federal Parliament and some provincial legislative assemblies, the bill numbering restarts at the beginning of a new session.

[26] Regulations follow similar patterns, but there is much greater variation between different jurisdictions.