If you've read our Steps in Legal Research, you already know it is extremely difficult to identify a relevant statute or regulation via keyword search.
Instead, use secondary sources to determine which statutes apply to your research question (see our Secondary Sources pages for further assistance).
Then use the government website to locate and read the statute(s) using the information on this page.
Once you've identified a statute, determine the official source for legislation in the jurisdiction you are researching.
For both Ontario and federal legislation, government websites are considered official sources of legislation. However, this is not true for all jurisdictions in Canada; consult the table in the McGill Guide at Rule 2.1.3 to determine the official source for your jurisdiction.
CanLII, Westlaw, and Lexis are not official sources of legislation but provide valuable functionality such as linking cases and secondary sources that discuss the legislation.
The vast majority of legal research tasks require you to locate a current, consolidated version of a statute (i.e. one that is updated to reflect ongoing amendments). If you already know the name or citation of the statute you need, you can retrieve it fairly easily.
Follow the below instructions to locate a current version of a statute on Justice Laws or e-Laws. These are official sources of legislation (see How Laws are Published).
You can also find current statutes using unofficial versions on legal research services like CanLII, Westlaw, and Lexis (see What is an "official" version of legislation). While unofficial, these services provide useful additional functionality such as the ability to note up a statute.
No matter which source you use to retrieve a statute, checking the currency date is a crucial step.
Statutes can be amended or repealed at any time. Unless you are conducting historical research, you need the most up-to-date version possible. Therefore it is always necessary to identify when the statute was last updated, even if you are using a government website.
To do so, find the statute's currency date, which is usually near the top of 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, 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 Status of Bills search to determine if amending legislation has been passed during that time frame. This is explained in more detail in Step 3, below.
Noting up a statute is a two part process.
First, you must update it to determine if it has been amended by a bill since the currency date you found in Step 2.
Amendments are edited into a statute fairly quickly in the online environment; however, there is still often a lag of a few weeks up to a few months between when an amendment is passed by a legislature and when it is edited into the text of a statute online.
You must therefore update a statute by searching for amending bills that have been passed in the last few weeks.
The following describes how to update a statute on Justice Laws (federal) and e-Laws (Ontario). For other jurisdictions, consult the resources listed under Further Reading.
The second step is to look for judicial consideration of the statute. For more information on how to do this, see Noting Up Legislation.
If you would like to track any upcoming changes to legislation on an ongoing basis, see Current Awareness: Staying Up to Date in Law for how to create Legislative Alerts.
Private acts are not consolidated online in the e-Laws and Justice Laws databases. Both the Ontario and federal governments provide an online Table of Private Statutes to help identify and locate private acts:
Some legal research tasks may require you to retrieve historical versions of a statute. This could mean a point-in-time statute (i.e. a statute or provision as it existed on a specific date) or source law (i.e. an act as it was originally passed).
Both e-Laws and Justice Laws allow you to view statutes as they existed at a specific point in time. You can view point-in-time versions going back to 2003 for federal statutes and 2004 for Ontario statutes.
To find point-in-time versions, first navigate to the current version of the act. Prior versions are listed as "Previous versions" on Justice Laws and "Versions" on e-Laws.
CanLII also provides point-in-time versions from within a statute (under the "Versions" tab)
Finding point-in-time versions prior to 2003-4 is a much more complex process that involves tracing amendments between each print consolidation. Speak to a law librarian for further assistance.
Both e-Laws (Ontario) and Justice Laws (federal) allow you to view law as enacted (source law).
In Justice Laws, you can find source law from the homepage by clicking into their "annual statutes" database. Federal source law is available in Justice Laws going back to 2001.
In e-Laws you can find source law by searching or browsing from the homepage and selecting "source law" instead of the default ("consolidated law"). Ontario source law is available in e-Laws going back to 2000.
For source law from before 2000/2001, you will need to consult the annual statute volume for the relevant jurisdiction (see historic sources).
These legislation databases are not official but have useful functionality that is not possible on the government websites.
For more information on noting up legislation, consult the following.
Updating Statutes and Regulations for all Canadian Jurisdictions by 
The Comprehensive Guide to Legal Research, Writing & Analysis, 3rd edition by See online options listed on our Canadian Legislation -- federal and Canadian Legislation -- Ontario pages.
