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.
This page provides information on the following legal research tasks associated with researching regulations:
Regulations are issued and changed on a regular basis, which can make them a challenge to work with because updating becomes such an important component of the research process.
Current, consolidated regulations are typically fairly easy to find as long as you have one of the following
The following drop downs provide information on how to retrieve an official copy of a current regulation on Justice Laws (federal) and e-Laws (Ontario).
You may also wish to view regulations on a legal research service such as CanLII, Westlaw, or Lexis. While legal research services are not official sources for regulations, they are still useful tools for reading, noting up, and viewing associated commentary for a regulation.
The following provides information on how to access regulations on these three services.
As with statutes, there can be a lag between when a new regulation is issued and when it appears on the government's website or in legal research service database. No matter which source you use to retrieve a regulation, checking the currency date is a crucial step.
To do so, find the regulation's currency date, which is usually near the top or bottom of the document. This is phrased differently in various databases, but often shows up as a "currency date" or "current to..." statement. For government legislation websites, the currency date is often several weeks to one month in the past; for CanLII, Westlaw, and Lexis this gap is usually even wider.
Now that you know the currency date, you must account for this gap by conducting a search to determine if new or amending regulations have been passed during that time frame. This is explained below in Step 3.
Noting up a regulation is a two step process.
First, you must update it to determine if any new regulations have been registered that amend or replace your target regulation between the date of your research and the currency date you found in Step 2.
The following drop downs describe how to update federal and Ontario regulations. For other jurisdictions, consult the resources listed under Other Canadian Jurisdictions.
Second, you must look at whether the regulation has been discussed or considered by the courts. While they are not judicially considered as often as statutes, it is still important to note up a regulation.
The same tools described for noting up statutes are used for noting up regulations.
►See Noting Up Legislation for step-by-step instructions.
As with statutes, a regulation may come into force all at once or different provisions may be brought into force in different ways and at different times.
Consult the following drop downs for more information on finding commencement information for Ontario and federal regulations.
For other provinces and territories, consult the resources in Other Canadian Jurisdictions.
The following information is useful if you need to research regulations prior to the dates available online.
From 1875-1939, federal statutory orders and regulations were published in the "prefix" section of the Statutes of Canada sessional volumes.
During World War II, the Canadian War Orders and Regulations were published between 1940 and 1944; from 1945 to 1947 this publication was issued under the new name Statutory Orders and Regulations.
The organized publication of federal regulations only became practice in 1947, when the Canada Gazette began publishing Part II. From this point on, federal regulations were periodically published in a consolidation that incorporated all amendments in the prior years into the face of the regulation (much like the historical process for statutes). The Consolidated Regulations of Canada, 1978 is the last print consolidation of federal regulations before the process moved online.
To find older regulations as they were passed or as they were consolidated in historical revisions, consult our Canadian Federal Legislative Documents: Regulations page. These resources are also useful for finding Regulatory Impact Analysis Statements in the Canada Gazette.
Ontario regulations were periodically published in a consolidation that incorporated all amendments in the prior years into the face of the regulation (much like the historical process for statutes). The Revised Regulations of Ontario, 1990 is the last print consolidation of Ontario regulations before the process moved online.
To determine what regulations were tied to a historical version of a statute, consult the Table of Regulations in the back of the Ontario annual statutes. This table has been published since 1965 and lists by act all regulations contained in the last revision as well as subsequent regulations up to the date of the annual volume.
To find regulations as they were passed or as they were consolidated in historical revisions, consult our Ontario Legislative Documents: Regulations page.
Detailed online resource on legislative research in every province and territory in Canada.
A useful resource for researching Quebec law. Call number: KEQ140 .M38 2015 LAW (Reserve).