For legislation and case law, JIBC follows the Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation (9th ed.) (2018), known as "The McGill Guide".
Note: in-text citations always include the specific section and subsection or page/paragraph number.
If you are new to legal citation, we highly recommend taking a few minutes to review the Queen's University Legal Citation Guide for cases, statutes, and regulations.
The following dictionaries are available through Lexis+ Canada:
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Restricted Access Resource is only available to JIBC students and faculty. You will be prompted to log in.
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Open Access Resource that is freely available online. |
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Canadian Content Resource contains Canadian articles and data. |
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Best Bet Resource is a good choice for the subject area. |
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eBook Resource contains eBooks. |
The following legal texts are available through WestLaw Canada:
The following texts are available in the Reference or Reserve section of the Library. You can use these books inside the Library but you cannot check them out. The Library keeps the most updated version of each text.
Legislation: Written and approved laws. Also known as statutes, or acts.
Bill: A proposed statute, not yet approved.
Act: A bill which has passed through the various legislative steps required for it and which has become law. Also known as a statute.
Statutes: Statutes are laws that are passed by the legislature - federal or provincial/territorial.
Regulations: Rules made pursuant to a statute and known as subordinate legislation. Regulations always have an enabling statute; that is, a statute under which the regulations were made and operate.
A public law or statute applies to everyone in Canada. For example, the Criminal Code.
A private law or statute applies to a specific person, place, or corporation. For example, in some provinces, a hospital or university may have its own piece of legislation.
Generally, legislation passed in a year is published in a statute volume, where the acts are numbered sequentially (1, 2, 3, etc.) as chapters. Public statutes are published first in the volume, and private statutes are later in the volume.