BC Legislative Research

Official sources of BC legislation are published by the Queen’s Printer of British Columbia. In the province of BC, only the print versions of statutes and regulations are considered official.

Some common official print publications are the British Columbia Gazette, the Statutes of British Columbia, and Revised Statutes of British Columbia. All are available in the uvic law library print collection.

Unofficial sources are typically online reproductions of legal information through commercial & non-commercial publishers. These sources of primary law can sometimes be faster to find and contain links to supplementary information. Although reliable, unofficial sources cannot be used as official evidence of the law in the courtroom.

Some common examples of unofficial sources are BCLaws [www.bclaws.ca], Canlii [www.canlii.org/en/bc], & the Legislative Assembly of BC [www.leg.bc.ca].

BCLaws [www.bclaws.ca] is a comprehensive database where you will find public Acts and regulations, as well as Private, Local and Special Acts. The BC Gazette part I and II can be found here. Part I contains all other government orders and notices required by law to be published and Part II contains all new, amended and repealed provincial regulations. The BCLaws website contains information from the BC Gazette Part I form January 2003 to present, and Part II from October 2001 to present.

The Canadian Legal Information Institute, or Canlii, [www.canlii.org/en/bc] has a website that provides access to court judgments, tribunal decisions, and statutes and regulations from all Canadian jurisdictions. Canlii Connects [canliiconnects.org/en/] is their other site that hosts case commentary and summaries.

The Legislative Assembly of BC site [www.leg.bc.ca] provides resources such as Orders of the Day, Votes and Proceedings, Bills, and Hansard.Check out our other videos on how to use some of these source! For more legal research help you can email us at lawref@uvic.ca or visit us at the Research Help Desk

To locate a BC statute as enacted, we turn to the annual statutes of BC (SBC). The Statutes of British Columbia are published annually in print volumes and contain all new public and private Acts that are enacted during that calendar year. They can be found in the law library’s print collection or online at the BC Law website.

For the purposes of our research, we are interested in finding the enacted version of the Environmental Management Act, SBC 2003, c 53.

1. From the law library home page, we can get to the BC Laws website from the Refined Database list
2. On the BC Laws website, scroll down and click on “Historical Annual Statutes” and then click on “Public Statutes”
3. Since our Act was enacted in 2003, we are going to click on “2003” .  You can find the Act alphabetically or use the search box.  In this case I will click “e”
4. Click on “Environmental Management Act”, the resulting page will be the Act as the time is was enacted

This video will demonstrate 2 ways of finding BC statute amendments using the BC Laws website. To find amendment information you will need to consult the statute’s Table of Legislative Changes or Historical Table. The Table of Legislative Changes can be used to find amendment information after the Revised Statutes of BC 1996 up to the currency date shown on the consolidated act. The Historical Table can be used to find amendment information before the Revised Statutes of BC 1996 going back to the 1979 revision. If you want to go even further back in time you will need to consult the print volumes located in the library or online resources that have digitized versions of BC legislation such as Heinonline.

1. The Table of Legislative Changes

The Table of Legislative Changes lists all amendments made to an Act by section, including citations and the date on which the amendments came into force.

For our legal research question, we are interested in determining if the University Act, RSBC 1996, c 468. has been amended.

• On BClaws search for the consolidated version of the Act under ‘Laws of BC” and ‘Public Statutes and Regulations’.
• Click on the Table of Legislative Changes folder.
• You will find that 3 folders show up under this act. These are the 3 editions of the Table of Legislative Changes (or TLC)
• The 3 editions cover the period of Jan 1, 1997, (the day after the 1996 revision was published) to the table’s currency date.
• You will need to consult all three editions of the tables to find amendments since the Revised Statutes of BC 1996 version of the act.
• Here we are in the 1st edition TLC. Shown at the top in bold, we can see that the first edition table covers the dates of January 1 1997 to December 31,  2004. This table will show us any provisions and changes that happened to the Act between those dates.
• The first part of the table, in italics, indicates changes not in force
• The second part, in roman type, indicates changes that have come into force as of December 31, 2004.
• The table has 4 columns:
  • the “Section” column lists the section of the act that has been changed.
  • the “Changes” column shows us what type of change happened.
  • the “Citation” column provides the citations of the enactments that made the changes, so where to find them.
  • and the “Effective date” column tells us when the changes came into force and how.

In the “Changes in force” part of this table, we can see that Section 1 was amended twice. Legislative citations can be read as Year-Chapter-Section. This amending statute can be found in the 2003 Statutes of BC, in chapter 48, section 29. This amendment came into force on March 12, 2004 by way of regulation. Section 1 was amended again at a later date. This amending act can be located in the Statutes of BC 1999, in chapter 39, section 69. This amendment came into force on June 1, 2000 by way of regulation.

Note: each edition of the TLC has a different background colour. This is one way you can identity them. The 1st edition is grey, the 2nd edition is blue and the 3rd edition is purple. A cumulative Table of Legislative Changes is published in the Annual Bound Statutes with the same colours to identify the TLC editions

2. The Historical Table.
   Now we are back at the University Act folder on BC Laws, but instead of clicking the Table of Legislative Changes folder we are going to click on the Historical Table folder. References in the Historical Table will help us trace back amendments to the University Act from the 1996 Revision to the 1979 Revision.

• Click on the Historical Table folder
• We can see that italics are used again to identify legislative changes not in force as of the publication of the Revised Statutes 1996. The second part, that is not italicized, provides a legislative history of each section
• The “Section” column lists all section of the act in force on DEcember 1, 1996 and
• The “History” column provides a citation of the previous version of the statute from the 1979 revision and then identifies any citations of legislation if the section was enacted or amended between the 1979 and 1996 Revised Statutes.
• If we look at section 1 we can see that there are 2 citations listed. RS1979-419-1; 1987-48-1.
• The first citation refers to the previous version of the statute from the Revised Statutes 1979. An amendment was made to section 1 between the 1979 revision and the 1996 revision. The citation tells us that it can be found in the Statutes of BC 1987, Chapter 48, section 1.

Since these citations are pre-1996, you will need to consult the print volumes in the library or other online resources to find them.

Using BCLaws and Canlii, we’re going to look at 2 ways of finding prior versions of the Marriage Act, RSBC 1996, c 282.

1) On BCLaws, we can conduct point-in-time research for specific sections of an act. Keep in mind that the point-in-time information for acts on the BC Laws website is available from September 6, 2000 to present.

• We will start by finding the Marriage Act on BC Laws
• You can get to the BC Laws website from the law library’s homepage or by typing in this URL [www.bclaw.ca].
• click on “Laws of British Columbia” then “Public Statutes and Regulations”
• Locate the Marriage Act and click on the folder labeled “Act Point in Time” then “Point in Time – Marriage Act”
• The section column lists section numbers of the act that have changed.
• The “Effective date” column lists dates when changes to that section took effect.
• We can see for section 1, there are four links that give information about a different part of section 1 that changed.
• The links lead to content showing how the section read prior to the changes made on the effective date.
• There were two changes made to section 1 that took effect on May 29th 2014.
• If we click on the link we can see that these changes were of definitions in the act. “Chief executive officer” was repealed and and “registrar general” was added.

2) We can also look at previous versions of an act using CanLii. CanLii has a comparison feature which allows you to compare the current consolidated version of a BC statute with a past consolidated version. Note that the Canlii legislation database covers BC acts from 2009 to present.

• We want to compare the current Marriage Act with a previous version.
• You can access the Canlii website through the law library homepage or by typing in this URL [www.canlii.org]
• Click on British Columbia under the Browse section
• search for the Marriage Act using the middle search bar.
• In the “versions” tab, you can see multiple past versions are available.
• These are versions as consolidated over particular periods of time rather than a specific point in time that you can select.
• Let’s compare the current consolidated version with a previous consolidated version of the act between March 31, 2014 and May 28, 2014
• This will show us what the act looked like before and after the definition changes in section 1 took effect on May 29th 2014, the changes we looked at on BCLaws.
• The current consolidation is on the right and the older consolidated version is on the left.
• marked in red, we can see section one as it looked prior to the removal of “chief executive officer” .
• If we scroll down further we can see on the current consolidation, that the definition of “registrar general” was added after May 28th 2014, indicated in green.

Official versions of BC regulations, as originally registered, can be found published in the BC Gazette Part II. Unofficial versions of the BC Gazette Part II can be found online on BC Laws and are available from 2001 to present. The official print version is published in every 2 weeks and can be found in the law library.

We’ve discovered that the following regulation is relevant to our legal question: BC Reg 151/03. “151” stands for the regulation number and “03” stands for the year.

1. Start at the BC Laws homepage [www.bclaws.ca]
2. under “Licensed by: Queen’s Printer” scroll down to “Gazette Part II”
3. Click on 2001-2016 and find the volume for our year “Volume 46, Regulations 2003”
4. Next we will find the folder that contains reg 151. click on “No. 7 — 98 to 163, April 8”
5. Click on 151/2003 — 361/2003 , the second citation refers to the Order in Council number.
6. Here you will find the full text of the regulation.
7. Note the deposit date of the regulation. This indicates the date the regulation was filed with the Registrar of Regulations. Unless there is an “effective date” indicated in the regulation text, the regulation comes into force on the date of deposit.
8. Although the the regulation was deposited on March 31, 2003, the text in the regulation specifies an effective date of April 1, 2003. This regulation brought the Museum Act into force on that date.

If you are looking for official regulations prior to 2001, you can search the law library’s print collection of the BC Gazette. Also, UVic has a digitized collection of the the BC gazettes, from 1863 to 1931. Digitization of the gazette is ongoing and the collection will eventually include volumes of the gazette up to 1965. [https://archive.org/details/bcgazette]

• A consolidated regulation is the current version of a regulation that incorporates all amendments to that regulation.
  Using BC Laws and CanLII, we will look at two common ways to search for consolidated regulations online. For the purposes of our research, we are interested in finding regulations made pursuant to the Residential Tenancy Act, SBC 2002, c 78.

  1) On the BC Laws website, consolidated Regulations are considered unofficial.

  • Regulations are organized by enabling statute, so we are going to start by locating the Residential Tenancy Act.
  • From the BC Laws homepage, click on “Laws of British Columbia”, then “Public statutes and regulations”, and then you can find your act alphabetically.  Here is the folder for the Residential Tenancy Act, SBC 2002, chapter 78.  From here we are going to click on the regulations folder.  
  • There is one regulation listed that is currently in force, the Residential Tenancy Regulation – 477/2003 .
  • Click on this folder to view the full text of the regulation
  • Note:
  • At the top of the page in the grey box, we can see this consolidation is current to September 5^th 2023.  To see if amendments effective after that date, you can click on the linked Cumulative BC Regulations Bulletin 2023.
  • This regulation was deposited with the Registrar of Regulations on December 12, 2003 and came into force on January 1, 2004
  • The regulation was made under the enacting authority of the order in council 1239/2003

  2) We can also find current consolidated BC regulations on CanLII

  • Start on the Canlii Homepage,
  • You can search by typing in your citation or title name in the middle search bar
  • You can also browse to it by clicking on “British Columbia”, under “Primary Law”
  • Click on “Regulations” under “Legislation”
  • You can search for the regulation alphabetically by regulation title or search by the title of the regulation or enabling statute in the search bar
  • Clicking on the regulation title will bring you to the full text of the regulation

   

  For more legal research help, you can email us at lawref@uvic.ca

   

Using BCLaws and Canlii, we’re going to look at two ways of finding prior versions the Residential Tenancy Regulation, BC Reg 477/2003 made pursuant to the Residential Tenancy Act, SBC 2002, c 78.

1) Using BCLaws, we can conduct point-in-time research for specific sections of a regulation. The Point in Time tables for amended regulations, keep track of the original wording of a Regulation prior to amendments. Keep in mind that the point-in-time information for regulations on the BC Laws website is available from September 19, 2009 to present.

• Regulations are organized by enabling statute on BC laws, so we are going to start by find the Residential Tenancy Act.
• Go the the BC Laws homepage and click on “Laws of British Columbia” then “Public Statutes and Regulations”
• Locate the enabling act, in our case the Residential Tenancy Act, and click on the folder labeled “Regulations Point in Time” then “Point in Time – Residential Tenancy Regulation – 477/2003”
• The “section” column lists section numbers of the regulation that have changed.
• The “Effective date” column lists dates when changes to that section took effect.
• The link leads to content showing how the section read prior to the change made on the effective date.
• section 1 was renumbered as 1(1)     and (2) was added by BC Reg 278/2016 that took effect Dec 2 2016.
• If section 1 read differently prior to this amendment, the content would appear under the grey heading.

2) We can also look at previous versions of a regulation using CanLii. CanLii has a comparison feature which allows you to compare the current consolidated version of a regulation with a past consolidated version. Note that the Canlii legislation database covers BC regulations from 2010 to present.

• Using the Residential Tenancy Regulation, BC Reg 477/2003 again as our example. We are going to start by finding the current consolidated version.
• We are going to find it by going into “Browse”, “British Columbia” and searching for it using the middle search box.
• You can see multiple past versions are available. These are versions as consolidated over particular periods of time rather than a specific point in time that you can select.
• As we learned from the Point in Time table of this regulation on BC Laws, section 1 was amended by a regulation that came into force on Dec 2, 2016.
• To see what section one looked like before and after that amendment, we can click on the current version (which will include the amendment change) and the consolidated version of the regulation between 16 Feb 2009 and 14 June 2016 (before the amendment came into force on Dec 2, 2016)
• click “Compare”
• The current version is on the right and the older version is on the left. You can see the date range on the top
• Changes are highlighted. red means something was removed and green means something was added.
• On the current consolidation on the right, we can see in green, the additions that were made to section 1. Section 1 was renumbered and subsection 2 was added

Important insights on legislative intent can be found by looking at the debates of the legislature.  Other ways to find legislative intent are looking at conference reports, law reform material, research papers and white papers, to name a few. In this video, we are going to focus on how to find legislative intent through debates.

The record of the debates is called the “Hansard”. The debates are a verbatim record of what each member says in the legislature. The Hansard records the members’ debates on a bill at each stage of the bill: 1^st reading, 2^nd reading, committee stage, 3rd reading, and Royal Assent.  When researching legislative intent, the second reading and the committee stage are the most informative.

The second reading is where you will find the most substantial debate on the bill. At second reading the purpose and reasoning behind the bill is discussed and debated, and major speeches by are made by the sponsoring minister or, in the case of a private members bill, by the bill’s sponsor.

The committee stage is where the bill is reviewed and can be amended.  Witnesses can be called on to share their opinions with the committee. The committee then reviews the bill clause-by-clause. The committee stage can valuable details on the bill in question.

Based on our research question, we want to look at the debates around the “Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act SBC 2019 chapter 44.

To find the Hansard on a specific act, you will need to identify the parliament and session the act was enacted in.  To find out this information, you can check when the act was assented to.  This will let you know which year to start your search in. For our example, we can see by looking at the act, it was assented to in November 2019.

Like with our example, if you are looking for a bill from 1996 to present, you can find the debates via BC laws at www.bclaws.ca. Once on BC laws, click on “Bills” under “Current Collections”. You will then have to select if the bill current session or a previous session, as our bill is from 2019, we will select “Previous sessions”. Here we will have to select the exact session, which in our case is “2019 4^th session, 41^st parliament”. Here will be click on the “Progress of Bills table”, or it may also be called the “Bills table”.   You will then need to select if the bill is a Government Bill or a Private Members’ Bill, in our case, it is a Government Bill, so we will click on that link. We are now at the “Progress of Bills with Hansard Debates Table”. To find our specific bill, we can use Control F title to search for the title of the bill. Once we have found the bill on the table, we will see that there are links to the different days of the debates for the different stages: the first reading, second reading, committee stage, third reading, and Royal Assent. We want to focus on the second reading and committee stage. Review each day of debates under second reading and committee stage to ensure that you are getting the full understanding of the debates. When you click on one of the links, like this one for this day of the second reading, it will bring you to the debates for that day of the reading.

Hansard from 1970 to present also is available online on the website of the Legislative Assembly of BC at <leg.bc.ca>. From the main page, scroll down and under “Parliamentary Business” click on “Debates and Proceedings (Hansard)”.

We will then need to select the correct parliament and session, using our previous example, we will be looking at the 41^st parliament 4^th session 2019. Once we are at the correct session, we can then use the list of indexes on the right-hand side to help with searching. From 2005 to present, there are a variety of indexes to aid in searching. There is the Subject Index, Members Index, Business Index, and Voting Records. We want to choose the Business Index, as this is where there is specific information on the bills. Once on the Business Index, we can click on the letter that corresponds with the title of the bill. We can then find our index entry, which is our case is for the “Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act”. This index entry will provide us with links to the Hansard for each stage of the bill. 1R means first reading, 2R means second reading, C means committee stage, 3R means third reading, and RA means Royal Assent. For example, if we click on the first 2R link, this will bring us to the debate for this day of the second reading of our bill.

For an example for finding a bill from before 2005 on the Legislative Assembly of BC website, we are going to look at the “First Peoples’ Heritage, Language and Culture Act. SBC 1990,  chapter 7, which was assented to in 1990. You will need to select the correct parliament and session, which for our bill is the 34^th parliament, 4^th session 1990. Now that we are at the correct session, scroll down to indexes and click on “Indexes and associated files”. For Hansard prior to 2005, there is only the one index. To double-check that the bill you are looking for is in this session, click on “Bills introduced”. You can then navigate to the bill by looking for the title, the bills are listed in alphabetical order. Once you have verified that you are in the correct session, you can go back to the index and click on the letter that corresponds with the title of the bill. You can then find the bill by control F searching for the title. Once you have found the index entry, you can see that there are links to the debates for the bill at each stage: 1R for first reading, 2R for second reading, C for committee stage, 3R for third reading, and RA for Royal Assent. Clicking of a link, such as this one for the second reading, will bring you to the debates of the second reading for your bill.

Prior to 1970 there was no official verbatim record of the debates of the BC Legislature, debates were instead recorded in newspapers and collected together in Sessional Clippings books. For more legal research help or for information on how to research legislative intent prior to 1970, you can email us at lawref@uvic.ca