Canadian Legal Research Manual

Legislation is an umbrella term that refers to written laws enacted by a legislature or under its delegated authority. This includes two main types of legislation:

• Statutes: passed directly by a legislature.
• Subordinate legislation: made under the authority of a statute (e.g. regulations, bylaws, ordinances).

The following provides more information about these two types of legislation, as well as background information on "official" versus "unofficial" versions of legislation. 

When researching legislation, you must first determine what the official source is for the jurisdiction you are researching. 

Official versions are those designated as authoritative by the government that has issued the law. Unofficial versions, in contrast, are reproductions of laws — such as copies reproduced on platforms like CanLII, Lexis, and Westlaw. However, even a government-issued copy of a statute or regulation may be unofficial. Some provinces and territories make their laws available online but still consider the print version to be the official one.

Both the Ontario and federal governments have made their online versions of legislation official. For other jurisdictions, consult the table of sources at Rule 2.1.3 in the Uniform Guide to Legal Citation (the McGill Guide). 

Statutes (also called acts) are the written laws created and enacted by legislatures through the legislative process.

A statute may lay out the law on a particular topic (a substantive act) or it may change or repeal existing acts (an amending or repealing act). A statute may also do a combination of these two functions.

►See Researching Statutes for more information. 

Subordinate legislation, also called delegated legislation, is sometimes overlooked by researchers despite the fact that it has the full force of the law.

Regulations are the most commonly researched subordinate legislation and are concerned with highly specific legislative detail. This contrasts with the general matters or principles outlined in the enabling statute (the statute under which a regulation is issued). For example, a regulation might outline the details of a process or an enforcement mechanism established in the enabling statute.

Other types of subordinate legislation include ordinances, bylaws, rules, and any other legislation where a statute has delegated the creation and modification of legislation to another authority such as a ministry or government department.