Comments on: Linking to a Section in the Criminal Code

By: Frédéric Pelletier

Frédéric Pelletier — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 15:32:21 +0000

Update on CanLII: We have slightly improved the TOCs for Federal legislation. The table is better structured and its hierarchy can be expanded or collapsed. We also changed the URLs to headings, sections and subsections to make them unique and thus more reliable. Now s. 650 of the Criminal Code starts here.

By: Melanie Bueckert

Melanie Bueckert — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 15:13:34 +0000

Thank you so much for bringing attention to this matter, Simon. This is a problem I have struggled with for some time, and it's great to see some "fixes" emerging.

By: Angela Swan

Angela Swan — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 13:02:28 +0000

I used the CanLII version of the Criminal Code last night and found a beautiful table of the sections. I found what I wanted in less than a minute.

By: Omar Ha-Redeye

Omar Ha-Redeye — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 23:52:56 +0000

Wasn't sure if the numbers above you were referring to another link to the French, or if you were referring to the hyperlinked section numbers.
Thanks for the clarification.

By: Simon Fodden

Simon Fodden — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 21:14:09 +0000

Brilliant, Maureen. Thank you for pointing this out. I had the sneaking feeling I was missing something, and sure enough it was the "obvious" thing I feared.

Omar, that's the technique I described in my post. But both Frédéric's and Maureen's ways are better.

By: Omar Ha-Redeye

Omar Ha-Redeye — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 21:03:37 +0000

I usually click on the hyperlinked sections of the DoJ Code, which takes me to the French version. When copying the link from the French version back to the English, I get an adequate pinpoint url.
I'm sure there are better ways, but that's what has worked so far.

By: Maureen Heeney

Maureen Heeney — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 19:01:21 +0000

The DOJ site provides a very useful “Linking guide” (access by selecting “How to Link” from Help section on sidebar) which shows you how to link to a specific section. You just need to scroll through their list of statute names and copy the URL provided, filling in the desired section number. So, for your example of s. 650 of the Criminal Code, the URL would be: http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/C-46/section-650.html

By: Simon Fodden

Simon Fodden — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 17:33:00 +0000

Wow, the timing is odd. I'm very glad indeed that you guys have done this. Congratulations.

By: Frédéric Pelletier

Frédéric Pelletier — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:28:43 +0000

Dear Simon, you won't believe it - call it synchronicity or pure coincidence - but we planned to add this feature for some time and we are able to launch it... today. We did not even have the time to make the announcement on CanLII yet. In a nutshell, we now provide basic tables of contents for Federal statutes and regulations. See for instance what we did for the Criminal Code or the Access to Information Act. Of course you may now link to specific sections: s. 650 of the Criminal Code starts here. Some caveats should however be made: - The current tables of content are really basic ones: they only have two levels and do not necessarily reflect the text's real structure; - The URLs of the sections might change in a more definitive release of this feature, and the URLs of the headings will certainly change since they are not guaranteed to be unique in the current release. Other provinces will follow suit where the structure of the documents can be automatically parsed with reasonable efforts. We hope that this will be useful, and we are already working on an improved version of this feature. Frédéric Pelletier, CanLII's Editor in Chief