When did Sessional Statute volumes start including Tables of Legislative Changes?
Last revised June 22, 2022

Federal

Tables of legislative changes have been included in the Acts of the Parliament of Canada in one form or another since 1899. However, the way the information was organized and represented changed over the years until 1918 when the first Table of Public Statutes as we currently know it was published.

1899 – 1914

The first table of statutory amendments was included in the 1899 sessional volume under the name Table of Changes. This table shows amendments made that year to all public acts and all acts from the Revised Statutes of Canada, 1886. Subsequent tables follow this convention up to and including the 1914 sessional volume.

1914/1915 – 1917

The 1914/1915, 1916 and 1917 sessional volumes show amendments in two separate tables. The Table of Acts shows amendments to acts contained in the Revised Statutes of Canada, 1906 and the Table of Public Statutes shows amendments to all other public acts made between 1907 and 1917.

1918 – Present

The 1918 sessional volume was the first time that amendments to all public acts from revision years and annual volumes were reflected in a single table under the name Table of Public Statutes. The table shows amendments to RSC 1906 and all other public acts made between 1907 and 1918. From that point on, the format and content of the table is consistent.

Where is it within the text?

The table of changes is always situated in between the Public General Acts and the Local & Private Acts. In the earlier volumes, this tends to be towards the middle, but from 1918 on, it tends to be closer to the back of the volume. In the mid-sixties they started using different paper to help differentiate the table allowing it to be found more easily within the text.

Pre-1899

Before tables were included, finding amendments involved looking at each volume’s index. From 1892 to 1898 amendments are listed in the index under “ACTS, amended or repealed”. Pre-1892 amendments can only be found by looking through the index of each sessional volume under the name of the act or by subject of the act.

British Columbia
1912-Present

Tables of legislative changes have been published in the Statutes of the Province of BC since 1920. That first table in 1920 shows amendments to acts from the Revised Statutes of BC, 1911 and all public acts from the annual volumes for 1912 to 1920. From that year forward all sessional volumes include a Table of Public Statutes (or Table of Legislative Changes as it is now called).

The table is located at the end of the volume after both the Public and the Private Acts and has always been printed on differently colored paper making it easy to find at a glance.

Pre-1912

From 1893 to 1911, amendments from each year were listed in the index at the back of the sessional volume under the name of the act they amended. Pre-1893, there was no detailed index at the back of sessional volumes – only a title index at the beginning. Amending acts were noted there.