LEGISINFO FAQ
GENERAL INFORMATION ON LEGISLATION
How
does a bill become a law?
USING LEGISINFO
What will I find in the Text of the Bill section?
This link provides direct access to
all printed versions of the bill. Bills
may be printed on as many as four occasions:
- First Reading,
- As Reported By The Committee,
- Third Reading "As Passed Copy", and
- Royal Assent.
Not all bills are printed at each
stage listed above and it is not uncommon for a bill not to be printed as
reported by the committee where there are not significant amendments proposed
by the committee.
What will I find in the Major Speeches
section?
The Major Speeches portion of the site contains
links to those speeches delivered in the Senate and the House of Commons at
second reading by the bill’s sponsor and speeches delivered by a representative
from each recognized political party.
What will I find in the Status of the Bill section?
The Status of the Bill section indicates the current
stage of the bill. This portion of the
site is updated on a daily basis and reflects any action taken by the Senate
and the House of Commons on the previous day.
What will I find in the Reintroduced from the
Previous Session section?
Some bills from
previous sessions of Parliament never completed the legislative process. These bills are sometimes reintroduced in
the current session of Parliament and LEGISINFO provides
you with selected information on the previous versions of these bills such as
when the bill was introduced, as well as its bill number, title and the stage
that it reached in the legislative process.
What will I find in the Selected Recorded Votes section?
The Selected Recorded Votes section
provides links to the Debates of the Senate or the Debates of the House of
Commons where recorded votes have been taken that move a bill from one stage to
the next. For example, when a bill
passes second reading with a recorded vote, LEGISINFO provides you with a link to the results
of the vote in Hansard.
What will I find in the Coming into Force section?
LEGISINFO contains details about the coming into
force of each bill. Not all legislation
become enforceable laws when they receive Royal Assent. It is useful to know whether legislation is
in force, or what portions of the legislation are in force, and LEGISINFO does this for
you.
For more information on what coming into force
means, see the FAQ section on Coming into Force.
What will I find in the Departmental
Information section?
The Departmental Information section provides links
to the press releases and background documents prepared by federal government
departments on legislation. Departmental Information is available for most
government bills.
What will I find in the Legislative
Summary section?
Legislative Summaries are documents prepared by the
Parliamentary Information and Research Service of the Library of Parliament to provide
Parliamentarians with background and an explanation of the bill. These documents are prepared for most
government bills. Analysts, knowledgeable in the relevant area of policy or
law, write the Summaries as soon as resources permit, following First Reading
of a bill. New Legislative Summaries will be posted on the web site once the
texts are available in both official languages.
What will I find in the Further Reading
section?
The Further Reading section of LEGISINFO
provides several different sources of information. It contains a short bibliography of current magazine and journal
articles on the subject matter of the bill; links to press releases prepared by
the opposition parties; and links to selected websites that are relevant to the
subject matter of the legislation.
How do I use the Search function?
The Search function in LEGISINFO performs
searches for bills by bill number or by words found in the title of the
bill. For example, you could search for
the Species at Risk bill by typing any of the following: 5, C-5, c5, or
entering one or more words from the title of the bill. Note: The search engine is not case
sensitive.
Who can I contact if I require more
information about LEGISINFO or Canadian legislation in general?
You may contact the Library of Parliament at:
LIBRARY OF PARLIAMENT
Information Service
Parliament Hill
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0A9
Telephone:
1-866-599-4999 or
(613) 992-4793
Facsimile:
(613) 992-1273
TTY:
(613) 995-2266
Does LEGISINFO provide
historical information on legislation introduced before January 2001?
Currently,
LEGISINFO only contains information on legislation introduced after January
2001. For information on legislation
introduced in the Parliament of Canada before that date, please visit the
parliamentary web site (www.parl.gc.ca) or your local library.
For some bills, an SI number
often follows the Coming into Force information in LEGISINFO. What does this number mean?
At the end of the coming into force information there
is a reference number such as SI-2000/89.
This is a number referring to the specific instrument passed by the
Governor General in Council proclaiming the Act or sections of the Act in
force.
The reference number can be broken down into three key
elements: (1) SI is an acronym for Statutory Instrument; (2) 2000 refers to the
year that the SI was published; and (3) 89 signifies that this is the 89th SI
published for the year 2000.
COMMON TERMS FOUND IN LEGISINFO
What are Government Bills?
Government Bills are bills
introduced in the House of Commons by a Minister of the Crown. These bills are
drafted by the Department of Justice on the instructions of Cabinet. In the House of Commons, these bills are
numbered C-2 through to C-200.
The Leader of the Government in the
Senate normally introduces all Government Bills originating in the Senate,
though the sponsorship is usually assumed by another Senator as the Bill moves
through the legislative process.
What are Private Members’ Bills?
Private Members’ Bills are bills
introduced in the House of Commons by individual Members who are not cabinet ministers and in
the Senate by individual Senators who are not members of the Ministry.
These bills are referred to as Private Members’ Bills and Private
Senators’ Bills.
Private Members' Bills and Private Senators’ Bills follow the same
legislative process as Government Bills, although their consideration and the
time allocated to them is more restrictive.
In addition to Private Members’
Bills, there are private bills. Private
Members’ Bills (public bills) are concerned with matters of public policy while private
bills are those that are for the benefit of named individuals or
companies. Even though both public and
private bills can be introduced in the Senate and the House of Commons, private
bills are now almost always introduced in the Senate.
What is a Parliament?
While a Parliament can be used to describe
the legislative branch of Government, which consists of the Sovereign
(represented by the Governor General), the Senate and the House of Commons; in
this context it is used to describe a period of time during which the
institution of Parliament exercises its powers. A Parliament
begins on the day established for the return of the writs from a general
election and ends with the dissolution of Parliament and the calling of a
general election. For example, the 36th
Parliament began on 23 June 1997 and ended with the calling of the General
Election on 22 October 2000. Constitutionally,
Parliaments can exist for a maximum of five years, but generally they
last for three to four years.
What is a Session?
A session is the term used to describe the periods of
time or groupings of sittings into which a Parliament can be divided. The first
session of a Parliament begins with a Speech from the Throne and ends with
prorogation or dissolution of the Parliament.
There are usually several different sessions in a Parliament, but
there can be as few as one. Sessions
usually consist of a number of separate sittings, but can be as short as one
sitting day.
What is Hansard?
Hansard,
also titled the Official Report of Debates, is essentially a verbatim
transcript of the proceedings in the Senate and
the House of Commons. Hansard is
published after each sitting day and can be found on the Internet at http://www.parl.gc.ca.
Hansard
follows the actual order of the proceedings of each chamber and reports the
full deliberations. It records the speeches of Senators and Members in debate
in the Chamber. In addition, Hansard
contains lists of recorded votes, written answers to certain questions, and the
Speech from the Throne at the beginning of a session of Parliament. Hansard is printed separately in each
official language; the original language used by the speaker is indicated, and
the time is noted in five-minute segments.
What are the Debates?
The Debates (also titled the Official Report
of Debates) are essentially a verbatim transcript of the proceedings of each
chamber of Parliament. The Debates are also referred to as Hansard. For more information on the Debates, see the FAQ section
on Hansard.
What are the Journals?
The Journals are the official record of the
decisions of the Senate and the House of Commons.
What
does Coming into Force mean?
The Coming into Force section in LEGISINFO
provides information on the date that the legislation, or part of it, becomes
an enforceable law in Canada. Laws can
come into force, or become enforceable laws, in several ways:
- some laws come into force when they receive Royal Assent;
- some laws come into force on a day or days specified in the bill; and
- some laws come into force on a day or days set by the
Governor in Council (the Governor General, on the advice of the federal
Cabinet).
LEGISINFO provides you with details on how the
bill comes into force and when the bill or portions of the bill come into
force.
What is Royal Assent?
When the Senate and the House of Commons have both
passed a bill in the same form, the Governor General gives the bill Royal
Assent on behalf of the Crown and it becomes an Act of Parliament and a Statute
of Canada. Royal Assent is signified in writing by the Governor General, or one
of the Deputies of the Governor General, or it can be carried out in a ceremony
held in the Senate chamber in the presence of members of the Senate and House
of Commons.
LEGISINFO indicates the date
and chapter number of the Statutes of Canada for each bill that receives Royal
Assent. This information can be found
in the Status of the Bill section.
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