Statutory research series

Welcome to this short se­ries on statu­to­ry re­search. I want to help you re­search statu­to­ry evo­lu­tion and leg­isla­tive his­to­ry of Canadian statu­to­ry law.By statu­to­ry evo­lu­tion, I mean the evolution of an Act over time. Others call this leg­isla­tive evo­lu­tion (see Susan Barker & Erica Anderson, “Cinderella at the Ball: Legislative Intent in Canadian Courts” (2015) 38:2 Can Parl Rev 15, citing Ruth Sullivan, Sullivan on the Construction of Statutes, 5th ed (Markham, ON: Lexis­Nexis, 2008) at 577). By leg­isla­tive his­to­ry, I mean the record of the legislative process that leads to an enacted statute. Beware that other sources, including Canada’s Supreme Court do not use these terms consistently. See e.g. Agraira v. Canada (Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness), 2013 SCC 36 (us­ing the term “leg­isla­tive his­to­ry” to re­fer to how a sec­tion of an act was amend­ed over decades at para 66ff); R v Safarzadeh-Markhali, 2016 SCC 14 (stat­ing that they had “lit­tle ev­i­dence of the leg­isla­tive evo­lu­tion of the chal­lenged pro­vi­sion” at para 36). See also Gary L Redhead Holdings Ltd v Swift Current (Rural Municipality), 2017 SKCA 47 (dis­cussing the in­con­sis­tent us­age of the terms and a de­fence of dis­tin­guish­ing be­tween the two at paras 53–55). And for the meaning of Act and statute, read on! This will al­low you to un­der­stand the con­tent of an Act at any point in time and to find out what leg­is­la­tors said about bills pri­or to their pas­sage into law.

By the end of this se­ries, you should be able to do the fol­low­ing.

1. Identify the statu­to­ry sources of an Act and any amend­ments that have oc­cured to an Act through­out its his­to­ry. That means finding the statutes and bills from which the Act and any amend­ments to it arose.
2. Find the leg­isla­tive de­bates as­so­ci­at­ed with those bills.
3. Determine when the Act (or an amend­ment to it) came into force.

This page will be a work-in-progress that I think will even­tu­al­ly ex­pand to four small mod­ules. I will up­date this page as I com­plete the ma­te­r­i­al for each.

What this se­ries omits, but I want you to be aware of, are meth­ods of re­search into Indigenous laws and le­gal tra­di­tions. I have no prac­ti­cal ex­pe­ri­ence with those meth­ods of re­search. In the se­ries de­vel­oped on this page, you will see that even re­search­ing what Canada has writ­ten down about its leg­is­lat­ed law can be com­pli­cat­ed. It is all that more com­plex to re­search Indigenous law that may or may not be in writ­ten form and that is in var­i­ous stages of re­vi­tal­iza­tion, de­pend­ing on the par­tic­u­lar Indigenous na­tion. To learn more about this, I rec­om­mend read­ing about the work of the Indigenous Law Research Unit at the University of Victoria; a spe­cial is­sue of the McGill Law Journal on Indigenous law, le­gal or­ders, and tra­di­tions; and a col­lec­tion of es­says edit­ed by Michael Asch, John Borrows, and James Tully, Resurgence and Reconciliation: Indigenous–Settler Relations and Earth Teachings.

I also want to em­pha­size, es­pe­cial­ly for any­one com­ing to this se­ries who is not in law school, that this is not how to figure out what The Law is. It is only how to re­search one kind of ma­te­r­i­al that con­tributes to the de­vel­op­ment of Canadian law. Law is made in many ways, in many sites, with var­i­ous ma­te­ri­als and through re­la­tion­ships and hu­man com­mit­ments to mean­ings. What the leg­is­la­ture has cho­sen to de­clare through statute is only one part of how we cre­ate le­gal mean­ing to­geth­er.

Finally, be­fore em­bark­ing on any of the re­search I de­scribe in this se­ries, al­ways check whether some­body else has done some of the work for you. There may be a jour­nal ar­ti­cle, a court de­ci­sion, or even a Wikipedia ar­ti­cle that out­lines the rough statu­to­ry his­to­ry of an Act. But even if you use some­one else’s work as a start­ing point, you will of­ten want to check their work for your­self: did they get every date ex­act­ly right? did they miss any amend­ments? So whether you have to start from scratch or if you are start­ing from some­one else’s work, you’ll need to un­der­stand what I present in this se­ries.

Part 1: The materials

This first Part cov­ers the ma­te­ri­als you will en­counter dur­ing this type of re­search. These ma­te­ri­als are: bills, statutes, Acts in­clud­ing amend­ing Acts, Revised Statutes, official con­sol­i­da­tions, unofficial con­sol­i­da­tions, and Hansard records. I will present these all in this first Part. Another im­por­tant source is the Canada Gazette (and the provin­cial equiv­a­lents), but I will leave dis­cus­sion of the Gazettes un­til the final Part in this se­ries.

Here are some rough de­scrip­tions of these ma­te­ri­als I just men­tioned.

A bill: the piece of leg­is­la­tion that is de­vel­oped in Parliament (or a provin­cial leg­is­la­ture).Going forward, I will not distinguish between Parliament and provincial legislatures unless significant. A bill is what the Parliament drafts, de­bates, amends, and pass­es.A bill is often originally drafted by the executive branch of government for introduction to Parliament. A bill passed by Parliament be­comes an Act upon Royal Assent.This series will not focus on the full internal process of what happens in Parliament, but here is a good discussion between Professor Craig Forcese and Professor John Mark Keyes on the legislative process. See also House of Commons Procedure and Practice, 3rd ed (2017), Chapter 16: “The Legislative Process.”

In Parliament, bills are la­belled start­ing with a C- if they orig­i­nate in the House of Commons and they are la­belled start­ing with an S- if they orig­i­nate in the Senate. Numbering starts over at the be­gin­ning of each leg­isla­tive ses­sion. Some Acts that gained no­to­ri­ety pri­or to their pas­sage are of­ten known by their bill num­ber for quite some time be­cause this is how the me­dia and com­men­ta­tors would have been re­fer­ring to them.

For ex­am­ple, in 2021, there was a Bill C–10 (“An Act to amend the Broadcasting Act and to make con­se­quen­tial amend­ments to oth­er Acts”). Look at some of the head­lines: “Heritage Minister asks sen­a­tors to fo­cus on pass­ing Bill C-10,” “Feds ad­mit Bill C-10 faces op­po­si­tion across the coun­try.” These are am­bigu­ous with­out con­text, be­cause there is a Bill C-10 in every ses­sion of Parliament. See e.g. Bill C–10 from the 43rd Parliament, 1st Session, and Bill C–10 from the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session.

Hansard. Hansard refers to the record of what the leg­is­la­ture did with and said about a bill dur­ing its progress through Parliament.Named after the first official publisher of Parliamentary debates in the British Parliament.

A statute. A statute is the writ­ten text of the Act as ul­ti­mate­ly en­act­ed by Parliament. These are pub­lished in an­nu­al vol­umes en­ti­tled Statutes of Canada (or more sim­ply, Annual Statutes).Provinces have an equivalent.

An Act has a dual-mean­ing. It can re­fer to the en­act­ed Bill (the thing that re­ceives Royal Assent and which is pub­lished as a statute in the an­nu­al vol­ume). It also refers to the evolv­ing, ab­stract ob­ject that gets amend­ed over time. For ex­am­ple, the Assisted Human Reproduction Act is the ti­tle of a statute that was passed in 2004. It has been amend­ed since then and the name Assisted Human Reproduction Act con­tin­ues to re­fer to the cur­rent and chang­ing con­tent of that Act.

Revised Statutes. Several times in Canada’s his­to­ry (1886, 1906, 1927, 1952, 1970, 1985), Parliament has passed what are called Revised Statutes.An explanatory note included in the Revised Statutes of Canada, 1985, gives some helpful background to the process. No revision process or output is identical. The Statute Revision Commission has flexibility and discretion in how it approaches its task. In a later Part, I will present in more detail how to understand the 1985 revision and its supplements. These are when Parliament brings to­geth­er all amend­ments that have oc­curred to all the ex­ist­ing Acts over time and en­acts an up­dat­ed ver­sion of each of those Acts. These up­dat­ed ver­sions in­cor­po­rate di­rect­ly into their text the most up-to-date amend­ed lan­guage. They are not in­tend­ed to be new law. They are only meant to con­sol­i­date and de­clare anew “the law as con­tained in the Acts... for which the Revised Statutes are sub­sti­tut­ed.” The Revised Statutes have hun­dreds of chap­ters, one for each Act that was in force at the time.

In be­tween the pub­li­ca­tion of Revised Statutes, you have to put to­geth­er the con­tent of an Act by look­ing at all amend­ments that have hap­pened to an Act since its orig­i­nal pas­sage or since the most re­cent Revised Statute. But con­sol­i­dat­ed acts can help you with this.

Unofficial con­sol­i­da­tions, from providers like WestLaw, CanLii, or Canada’s Justice Laws web­site (pri­or to 2009) at­tempt to present what the con­tent of an Act is right now or at any point in time (go­ing back only so far, though). See e.g. CanLii’s unofficial con­sol­i­da­tion(s) of the Vancouver Charter from 2008 un­til now. These are gen­er­al­ly help­ful only for re­cent decades. E.g. You won’t find good unofficial con­sol­i­da­tions for Acts as they ex­ist­ed in 1925.

Official con­sol­i­da­tions (e.g. Canada’s Justice Laws web­site since 2009) pro­vide au­thor­i­ta­tive ev­i­dence of the con­tent of an Act is right now or at at any point in time (again, only go­ing back so far).This note from the Department of Justice explains what changed in 2009.

The de­ci­sion to pro­duce official re­vi­sions and/or con­sol­i­da­tions and the process for do­ing so differs be­tween fed­er­al Parliament and provin­cial leg­is­la­tures and the prac­tices have changed over time. In this se­ries, I will be fo­cus­ing on the ap­proach take by the fed­er­al Parliament and the BC leg­is­la­ture. If you’re do­ing work in an­oth­er province, these gen­er­al prin­ci­ples should help you un­der­stand the ap­proach tak­en by your province, but you’ll need to take some time to un­der­stand the par­tic­u­lar sys­tem(s) used in your ju­ris­dic­tion.

An example: the Copyright Act

For the rest of this Part, I will present a fed­er­al Act, the Copyright Act, and point out how all the ma­te­ri­als I just pre­sent­ed con­tribute to the prod­uct that we see to­day.

Today, an official con­sol­i­da­tion

First, to see the Copyright Act as it ex­ists to­day, we can rely on the official con­sol­i­da­tion pro­vid­ed by Canada’s Justice Laws web­site. Here are di­rect links to the full, up-to-date con­tent of the Act as officially con­sol­i­dat­ed: HTML; PDF. It in­cor­po­rates the effects of all amend­ments that are in force.

Original

While it is de­bat­able what the “orig­i­nal” Copyright Act was, a ver­sion with the struc­ture that has last­ed un­til to­day was passed in 1921.Its actual short title was The Copyright Act, 1921. The year was part of the name! This can get confusing, especially since when referring to the Act as later amended, it would still be called The Copyright Act, 1921. There were also precursor Copyright Acts, but this was the first Act that pulled all the parts together into a single Act. It was pub­lished in the an­nu­al vol­ume 11–12 George V in 1921,At this time, the annual statutes were titled using the regnal year. and you can read it here.

1985 official re­vised ver­sion

The Copyright Act was around dur­ing Canada’s most re­cent Revised Statute project (1985), so it was in­clud­ed as a chap­ter there (chap­ter C-42). You can read that chap­ter here.

A 2012 amend­ment

The Copyright Act has been amend­ed many times be­tween 1985 and to­day, in­clud­ing in 2012 when Parliament made many changes to the fair deal­ing user rights. The 2012 amend­ing Act can be found in the Annual Statutes of Canada 2012, Chapter 20. Here is its full text (HTML; PDF). It was en­ti­tled the Copyright Modernization Act and went through Parliament be­ing known as Bill C-11. You can fol­low the life of Bill C–11 on LegisInfo, in­clud­ing links to com­mit­tee hear­ings and Hansard records.

Copyright Act sum­ma­ry

I showed you a very ear­ly ver­sion pub­lished in 1921. I skipped over many amend­ments but showed you that the 1985 Revised Statutes in­clud­ed the Copyright Act at Chapter C-42. And I showed you an amend­ing Act: de­vel­oped as Bill C-11, pub­lished as a statute in the Annual Statutes of 2012, the effects of which are now part of the cur­rent official con­sol­i­da­tion on the Justice Laws web­site.

Concluding Part 1

In this Part, I have only in­tro­duced you to the ma­te­ri­als in­volved in statu­to­ry re­search and by ex­am­ple showed you some of the ways of ac­cess­ing them. You should know what a bill is; what a statute is; the dual-mean­ing of the word Act and that Acts can evolve over time; that gov­ern­ments may cre­ate official con­sol­i­da­tions of Acts and that the Parliament very oc­ca­sion­al­ly cre­ates Revised Statutes.

In my ex­am­ples, I have most­ly shown you the sim­plest, mod­ern modes of ac­cess­ing these ma­te­ri­als (e.g. the official con­sol­i­da­tion; Parliament’s LegisInfo por­tal which links to­geth­er bills and Hansard in a help­ful way). Once you go back a bit fur­ther in time, it be­comes more com­pli­cat­ed to iden­ti­fy the evo­lu­tion of an Act over time and to iden­ti­fy the as­so­ci­at­ed statutes, bills, and Hansard records.

That is what I will share with you in the fol­low­ing Parts: how to ac­tu­al­ly find these ma­te­ri­als and var­i­ous meth­ods of re­search that are effective across different eras.

Part 2: Federal statutory evolution

In this Part, I will show you how to use specific on­line re­sources to dis­cov­er the statu­to­ry ma­te­r­i­al that has con­tributed to a fed­er­al Act.

This will in­volve the fol­low­ing re­sources:

• Today’s con­sol­i­dat­ed Acts at the Justice Laws web­site.
• Annual Statutes avail­able on­line from 2001 on­wards.
• Annual Statutes from be­fore 2001 are un­for­tu­nate­ly more difficult to ac­cess. If you are a stu­dent with ac­cess to your uni­ver­si­ty’s on­line data­bas­es, you like­ly have ac­cess to HeinOnline and a data­base ti­tled “Annual Statutes.” Here is the di­rect link for those at UBC. If you do not have on­line ac­cess, most uni­ver­si­ties also have the print vol­umes avail­able.
• Revised Statutes of Canada, 1985, and its sup­ple­ments can be found in PDF form here, on the Government of Canada’s pub­li­ca­tion site.
• Revised statutes from be­fore 1985 are more difficult to ac­cess. All re­vised statutes (1886, 1906, 1927, 1952, 1970, 1985) are avail­able through HeinOnline, in a data­base ti­tled “Revised Statutes of Canada.” Here is the di­rect link if you’re at UBC. Most uni­ver­si­ty li­braries will also have print vol­umes of these.

To show you how to use these, I will work through an ex­am­ple. Let’s trace the size of the Canadian Radio-tele­vi­sion and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) through­out its his­to­ry.

Section 3(1) of to­day’s official con­sol­i­da­tion of the CRTC ActCanadian Radio-tele­vi­sion and Telecommunications Commission Act, RSC 1985, c C-22, s 3(1). And a small detail about citing statutes: when you cite a statute without specifying a particular point in time, the convention is that you are citing to the statute as it is amended at the time that your writing is published. See Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation, 9th ed (Toronto: Thomson Reuters, 2018), s 2.1.11. says the fol­low­ing:

There is es­tab­lished a com­mis­sion, to be known as the Canadian Radio-tele­vi­sion and Telecommunications Commission, con­sist­ing of not more than 13 mem­bers, to be ap­point­ed by the Governor in Council.

Today, the CRTC can have at most thir­teen mem­bers.

To trace this Section back through time, look to the re­vi­sion an­no­ta­tion at the end of the Section. I’ll re­pro­duce the re­vi­sion an­no­ta­tion here, but it is part of both the PDF and HTML views of the con­sol­i­dat­ed statute to­day:

R.S., 1985, c. C-22, s. 3; 1991, c. 11, s. 76; 2010, c. 12, s. 1701.

This an­no­ta­tion tells us that Section 3 was amend­ed in 2010 and 1991. It also tells us that Section 3 was most re­cent­ly en­act­ed in full in the Revised Statutes of Canada, 1985. This does not mean that this Section ul­ti­mate­ly orig­i­nat­ed in 1985. The Revised Statutes of Canada will pro­vid­ed a fur­ther re­vi­sion an­no­ta­tion if there is his­to­ry pri­or to 1985. But for now, we know that we need to ex­am­ine at least the fol­low­ing sources:

• SC 2010, c 12, s 1701 (Annual Statutes of Canada 2010, Chapter 12, Section 1701);
• SC 1991, c 11, s 76 (Annual Statutes of Canada 1991, Chapter 11, Section 76);
• RSC 1985, c C-22, s 3 (Revised Statutes of Canada 1985, Chapter C-22, Section 3).

Before we dive into what the CRTC Act looked like af­ter each of those re­vi­sions/amend­ments, let’s keep trac­ing the his­to­ry back­ward from 1985. For this, we need to go to the Revised Statutes of Canada, 1985, Chapter C-22, Section 3. Find it from the Government of Canada here or through UBC’s HeinOnline data­base here.

RSC 1985 is huge: sev­en vol­umes and sev­er­al sup­ple­ments. I al­ways go to the in­dex first to figure out in which vol­ume I’ll find the chap­ter that I want. It says Chapter C-22 is in Volume II. There, you’ll find the CRTC Act as it was “re­vised”Recall that these periodic re­vi­sions are not intended to change the law, but instead only consolidate and declare anew “the law as contained in the Acts... for which the Revised Statutes are substituted.” in 1985.

Here, we find that Section 3 does in fact point back fur­ther in time, to a ci­ta­tion that looks a lit­tle strange: 1974-75-76, c. 49, s. 3. Before 1983, a vol­ume of the Statutes of Canada would some­times span sev­er­al years when a ses­sion of Parliament spanned sev­er­al years. That seems to no longer be the prac­tice. In any case, since this is be­fore 2001, there is no eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble, on­line source for this vol­ume. I ac­cess it through HeinOnline. Again, the di­rect link for those at UBC is here.

There is no re­vi­sion an­no­ta­tion at the end of Section 3, so this is where our trac­ing ends.

A point of cau­tion: while this is all cor­rect re­gard­ing the Canadian Radio-tele­vi­sion and Telecommunications Commission un­der the Canadian Radio-tele­vi­sion and Telecommunications Commission Act, there was a pre­de­ces­sor com­mis­sion named the Canadian Radio and Television Commission cre­at­ed by the Broadcasting Act in 1968. This would have be­come ap­par­ent through re­search­ing sec­ondary sources and Hansard. If I were do­ing this re­search for real, I would want to un­der­stand what that pre­vi­ous com­mis­sion looked like and whether Parliament in­tend­ed the new CRTC to be like the old CRTC.

To sum­ma­rize, the en­tire his­to­ry of Section 3 of the CRTC Act is cap­tured by:

• SC 1974-75-76, c 49, s 3;
• RSC 1985, c C-22, s 3;
• SC 1991, c 11, s 76;
• SC 2010, c 12, s 1701.

When did the Commission change size? Upon ini­tial cre­ation and in 1985, the Commission was made up of up to nine full-time mem­bers and ten part-time mem­bers. Today, it is made up of no more than thir­teen mem­bers. Did that change hap­pen in 1991? Or did it hap­pen in 2010? To dis­cov­er this, we need to look at the Statutes of Canada in 1991 and 2010.

For the 1991 amend­ment, I need to rely on HeinOnline again (the di­rect link for UBC peo­ple). Statutes of Canada 1991, Chapter 11 was in fact a new Broadcasting Act with the struc­ture that we see to­day. It also in­clud­ed “re­lat­ed and con­se­quen­tial amend­ments” to re­lat­ed Acts, in­clud­ing an amend­ment to the size of the CRTC.I would take some time to look closely at the structure of SC 1991, c 11. Sections 1 through 71 become the substantive content of the Broadcasting Act. Sections 72 and onward are quite different. Sections 72 and onward mostly repeal, amend, or replace various sections of other Acts. In particular, Section 76 is the Section that amends the CRTC Act to change the size of the CRTC.

Section 76 changes the com­po­si­tion of the CRTC. This amend­ment changes four of the part-time po­si­tions into full-time po­si­tions. After this amend­ment, the CRTC con­sists of “not more than thir­teen full-time mem­bers and not more than six part-time mem­bers.”

For the 2010 amend­ment, we can use the Annual Statutes pub­lished on the Justice Laws web­site. Chapter 12 (the Jobs and Economic Growth Act) is a mon­ster Act. It has over two-thou­sand in­di­vid­ual sec­tions. But we are only in­ter­est­ed in Section 1701. There, we see that the CRTC Act was amend­ed to read as it does to­day: “not more than 13 mem­bers” and no men­tion of part-time mem­bers. Section 1702 amends Section 4 of the CRTC Act to say that all mem­bers are full-time mem­bers: “A mem­ber shall de­vote the whole of his or her time to the per­for­mance of his or her du­ties un­der this Act.”

Enactment does not imply in force

So far, I have only shown you how to find the statu­to­ry ma­te­r­i­al that has con­tributed to the con­tent of the Act. What I haven’t shown you, and what I am post­pon­ing un­til a lat­er Part, is how to de­ter­mine when these amend­ments ac­tu­al­ly come into force. The CRTC didn’t sud­den­ly lose its part-time mem­bers when the Jobs and Economic Growth Act re­ceived Royal Assent.

Concluding Part 2

In this Part, through ex­am­ple, I showed you how to trace the con­tent of a fed­er­al Act back through time by fol­low­ing the re­vi­sion an­no­ta­tions found at the end of any Section. This al­lows you to find the statu­to­ry ma­te­r­i­al that has con­tributed to an Act. Here are the im­por­tant things you should un­der­stand now.

A re­vised statute (as was done in 1985) is a fresh start­ing point for any Act. Revised statutes are mas­sive, and you should start with the ta­ble of con­tents or in­dex.

In the past, “an­nu­al” statutes some­times spanned sev­er­al years.

An Act can have mul­ti­ple pur­pos­es. The 1991 Broadcasting Act, for in­stance, cre­at­ed the sub­stan­tive struc­ture and con­tent of to­day’s Broadcasting Act and also made amend­ments to re­lat­ed Acts.

Unless you sup­ple­ment your statu­to­ry re­search with sec­ondary sources and Hansard, you may miss large parts of the pic­ture: e.g. the CRTCThe Canadian Radio and Television Commission. that ex­ist­ed be­fore to­day’s CRTC.The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.

Part 3: Federal legislative history

In this Part I will show you how to find the leg­isla­tive his­to­ry of these amend­ments. What did mem­bers or Senators say about why they were chang­ing the size of the CRTC? What was pre­sent­ed in com­mit­tee? Were there any amend­ments to the bill as it worked its way through Parliament? Hansard and re­lat­ed records can help an­swer these ques­tions. I’ll show you how to do this work with a his­toric bill and then with a mod­ern bill, as the re­sources avail­able to do this re­search change over time.

• Research into the leg­isla­tive his­to­ry of mod­ern bills—from the 37th Parliament (2001) on­ward—is made fair­ly straight­for­ward through the LEGISinfo site. For mod­ern bills from 2001 on­ward, the en­tire leg­isla­tive his­to­ry is or­ga­nized on LEGISinfo with con­ve­nient links to the rel­e­vant Hansard and com­mit­tee records.
• From 1994–2000, LEGISinfo pro­vides much less in­for­ma­tion about each bill and doesn’t link to the rel­e­vant Hansard and com­mit­tee records. Nonetheless, through a mix of LEGISinfo and the sep­a­rate Hansard and com­mit­tee-record sites, ma­te­r­i­al from 1994–2000 is still pret­ty well re­triev­able di­rect­ly from Parliament: House Hansard, House com­mit­tees, Senate Hansard, Senate com­mit­tees. It just takes a lit­tle more ex­plor­ing on your part.
• For bills from be­fore 1994, you will have to use the Canadian Parliamentary Historical Resources, with bills, Hansard, and com­mit­tee records go­ing as far back as the first Parliament. These re­quire a lot of man­u­al search­ing through large PDFs.

The gen­er­al steps are the same across all era, but the par­tic­u­lar re­sources that you’ll use change.

Steps:

1. Identify the bill that led to the statute.
2. Use Hansard to lo­cate the Bill’s read­ings, re­fer­ral to com­mit­tee, com­mit­tee records, and re­port(s).

Historic (pre-1994) bills

Let’s first do this the hard way. What did Parliament have to say about the 1991 change?As presented above, SC 1991, c 11, s 76 amended the CRTC Act to convert four of the CRTC’s part-time positions into full-time positions.

In this case, the ta­ble of con­tents of the Statutes of Canada 1991 tells us that Chapter 11 went through Parliament as Bill C-40. It re­ceived Royal Assent on February 1, 1991. This in­for­ma­tion will help us to lo­cate in­for­ma­tion about the Bill in Hansard.

Use the Canadian Parliamentary Historical Records to browse to the House of Commons Debates for the time pe­ri­od as­so­ci­at­ed with that par­tic­u­lar Bill C-40. That would be the 34th Parliament, 2nd Session (span­ning April 3, 1989 to May 12, 1991). Then, go to the in­dex of those de­bates to gath­er the list of pages that you’ll need to look at. Here is page 94 of the in­dex, where it lists Broadcasting Act (Bill C-40) along with the pages for its first read­ing, sec­ond read­ing, re­fer­ral to com­mit­tee, re­port stage and as­so­ci­at­ed mo­tions, third read­ing, notification of Senate pas­sage, and Royal Assent.

I would first jump to pages 5546–65 and 7003–14. Second read­ing is the main de­bate over the gen­er­al pur­pose of a bill. The bill’s spon­sor will present the mo­ti­va­tions, peo­ple will speak for and against the gen­er­al thrust and im­pli­ca­tions of the bill. Clause-by-clause crit­i­cism isn’t a main fo­cus at this stage, but it is still a very im­por­tant stage of a bill’s jour­ney through Parliament.

The House de­bates for this ses­sion are split across four­teen vol­umes. You can poke around by tri­al-and-er­ror to de­ter­mine which of the vol­umes con­tains the pages of in­ter­est, or you can look to the in­dex, which re­ports the pages con­tained in each vol­ume. Once you’ve lo­cat­ed the ap­pro­pri­ate vol­ume, you can use the web view­er to browse page-by-page or use the search func­tion. You can also down­load the full PDF if you pre­fer to use your own PDF soft­ware.

At Second Reading, I did not find any­thing di­rect­ly dis­cussing change in com­po­si­tion of the CRTC, but at page 5564, Jim Edwards (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Communications) says that the bill “strength­ens the abil­i­ty of the [CRTC] to reg­u­late and su­per­vise the broad­cast­ing sys­tem” and that it will make “the CRTC more efficient, more re­spon­sive to Canadians.”

To see whether the change in com­po­si­tion was con­sid­ered in com­mit­tee, we need to de­ter­mine which com­mit­tee this bill was re­ferred to. At page 7014 of the House Hansard, it mere­ly tells us that the House agreed to the mo­tion to read the bill a sec­ond time and to re­fer it to “a leg­isla­tive com­mit­tee” (rather than nam­ing a stand­ing com­mit­tee). This sug­gests that there was a com­mit­tee cre­at­ed specifically to con­sid­er this one bill. You can browse the com­mit­tee records and lo­cate the records from the Legislative Commitee on Bill C–40.

This is a mas­sive vol­ume, in­clud­ing ev­i­dence sub­mit­ted to the com­mit­tee by in­ter­est­ed par­ties across Canada, de­bates among com­mit­tee mem­bers, line-by-line con­sid­er­a­tion of the bill, etc. I used the search func­tion to search for the term “full-time” (in quotes).

• On January 2, 1990, the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists pre­sent­ed to the com­mit­tee a re­port that said “the in­crease in the num­ber of full-time com­mis­sion­ers [… should] as­sist the CRTC to make efficient de­ci­sions.”
• On February 14, 1990, David C. Coville (Senior Director, Department of Transportation and Communications, Province of Nova Scotia) said, “we wish to re­it­er­ate our sup­port for the pro­vi­sions in the leg­is­la­tion al­low­ing for the ap­point­ment of full-time com­mis­sion­ers who would re­side in the re­gions they rep­re­sent, in­creas­ing the num­ber of full-time com­mis­sion­ers from 9 to 13 … the cu­mu­la­tive effect of these pro­vi­sions will be a more efficient, effective, and re­gion­al­ly sen­si­tive com­mis­sion.”

I would go fur­ther if I were do­ing this re­search for real, but that is the kind of in­for­ma­tion you can find out of the com­mit­tee re­ports. These state­ments don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly reflect leg­isla­tive in­tent, but do re­veal con­text that was avail­able to Parliament. The clause that changed the com­po­si­tion of the CRTC was not amend­ed by the com­mit­tee nor dis­cussed at the re­port stage. I would com­plete this re­search by re­peat­ing all of the above for the Senate records.

Modern (post-1994) bills

This only gets eas­i­er as you move to­wards the present-day. Instead of search­ing through text ex­tract­ed from PDF scans, you get to seach di­rect­ly in the raw text of the ma­te­ri­als, and the Parliament web­sites or­ga­nize and link the ma­te­r­i­al to­geth­er in a much more help­ful way.

On my next up­date of this post, I will present a short ex­am­ple of how to do this re­search on a mod­ern bill. That will com­plete this Part on fed­er­al leg­isla­tive his­to­ry.