This page includes information on finding and understanding Canadian legislation and case law via Seneca Libraries and open access databases, as well as government websites.
Annual Statutes
The Annual Statutes are a collection of the Public General Acts in the form in which they were originally enacted by Parliament in a given calendar year. They include new Acts as well as Acts and provisions that amend existing Acts.
Revised/Consolidated Statutes
When the federal government makes changes to Canadian law, often it will create "amending" Acts. These amending documents make changes to existing laws. The amending Act will add new sections or make changes to existing sections of the existing Act. A consolidated Act or regulation is one that has been updated and incorporates the amendments into the original text (Source).
The Public General Acts were periodically consolidated into the Revised Statutes of Canada (RSC). There have been six revisions: in 1886, 1906, 1927, 1952, 1970, and 1985. The Seneca@York library collection includes the Revised Statutes of Canada 1985.
In 2009, the Minister of Justice was authorized to publish an “official” electronic consolidation of statutes and regulations. The Justice Laws Website (https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/) now provides an official consolidation of the federal Acts and regulations, doing away with the need to publish periodic revisions. The Justice Laws Website is generally updated every two weeks. Each Act and regulation in the database store their own consolidation date. The current-to date is displayed in the header area of every document.
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- Please note that we do not subscribe to the commercial, labour, municipal, and computer/information technology Divisions/volumes of this publication (Divisions I, VII, IX, and X, respectively), only the Divisions/volumes on corporations, leases, wills and trusts, Ontario Family Law, and Ontario Court Forms (Divisions II, IV, V, VI, and VIII, respectively).
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