Canadian Legal Citation/Legislation

Statutes

A typical reference for a statute looks like this:

Canada Evidence Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. C-5, s. 4(3).

This form can be broken down into the following components.

Title,	Statute type	jurisdiction	year	(supplement),	chapter,	pinpoint.
Canada Evidence Act,	R.S.	C.	1985,		c. C-5,	s. 4(3).

NAME: The first part, in italics, is the name of the statute (usually X "Act"). If the name of the Act begins with "the", this is left out. Statutes may have a long name and a short name. The long name usually begins with "An Act respecting..." (e.g., "An Act respecting evidence and witnesses"). Always use the short name for referencing. Some federal Acts begin with "Canada". This is done to distinguish them from provincial statutes with similar names. Not all federal statutes begin with "Canada."

SERIES: The next part of the reference is the Series. The Series is the volume in which the statute is published. The series is always abbreviated. They are usually abbreviated as:

S. (for Statutes) + the abbreviation for the jurisdiction (S.C. for Canada, S.O. for Ontario, S.B.C. for British Columbia, etc.)

OR

R.S. (for Revised Statutes) + the abbreviation for the jursidiction (R.S. for Canada, R.S.B.C. for British Columbia, etc.)

YEAR: The next part of the Referencing is the year in which the Series containing the Statute was published. When a statute is passed, it is published in the Series for that year. So, if the Broadcasting Act was passed in 1968, its Referencing would be Broadcasting Act, S.C. 1968.

Every fifteen or twenty years, the government of each jurisdiction publishes all of its statutes still on the books in an up-to-date single volume, called the Revised Statutes. So, the Broadcasting Act, assuming it had not been repealed, would become a chapter in the Revised Statutes of Canada of 1985, and its Referencing would be Broadcasting Act, R.S.C. 1985.

CHAPTER: The last part of a legislative reference is the chapter number. ("c." followed by the number.) In an annual Statutes series, the number would be the order in which the statute was passed. If it was the first statute passed by the legislature that year, its chapter number would be C.1.

A Revised Statutes Series is published in alphabetical order, divided by letter. A statute's chapter number begins with the first letter of its name, followed by a number representing its place in the alphabetical order of the first letter of its name. In Revised Statutes, the Aardvark Act would therefore have the chapter number A-1, the Abacus Act would have Chapter number A-2, and the Banana Act would have chapter number B-1, and the Bandana Act would have chapter number B-2.

SECTION: If the reference is to a specific section or subsection of a statute, it will begin with s. and then indicate the section, followed by the subsection in brackets, the paragraph in a second set of brackets, and the subparagraph in a further set of brackets, if necessary:

s. 9 (2)(A)(iii) ---> refers to section 9, subsection 2, paragraph A, subparagraph iii.

It is important to include the subsections and paragraphs, as statutes such as the Income Tax Act can have very long sections.