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For concise and helpful overviews of legislation and how to find it, see:
Periodically the federal government publishes consolidations of all the statutes or regulations in force as of a particular date. These are referred to as the Revised Statutes or the Revised Regulations. The most current consolidation is the Revised Statutes of Canada 1985. Revised Statutes are denoted by RSC. Example: Canada Elections Act RSC 1985 c E-2.
While Revised Statutes are published periodically, annual statute volumes are published every year. These contain both new and amending statutes which have received Royal Assent during the past year. If a statute is passed after the most recent Revised Statutes, it will be cited to the annual volume in which it appears. SC denotes the Statutes of Canada. Example: Species at Risk Act SC 2002 c 29. To find the Statutes of Canada as passed and as they are currently, including amendments, see below.
Upon Royal Assent, a Bill becomes an Act of Parliament and assigned a statute chapter number. Periodically, these new statutes / sessional Acts are published throughout the year as issues of the Canada Gazette Part III - Acts of Parliament. The Gazette Part III contains new public Acts, Acts and provisions that amend existing Acts, and other publications such as Proclamations of Canada and Orders in Council relating to the coming into force of Acts in a given calendar year as made. The new Acts are also immediately made available on the Department of Justice's Laws website, entitled Annual Statute.
Up to date compilations of Acts and Regulations, including all amendments, are available online to be browsed or searched on:
Acts and provisions that amend existing Acts are published in the Annual Statutes. If you want to see the full text text of the amending provision, see 'Acts as Made' above, which will help you find the amending Act. To see if a Federal legislative provision has been amended see:
Using consolidated legislation in CanLII, the Department of Justice or LexisNexis will list all repealed legislation in the alphabetical list of legislation in force, and will provide information such as date of repeal and earlier versions of the legislation, but will not provide access to the full text of the legislation as it existed immediately prior to repeal.