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The Table of Public Statutes for Ontario (Detailed Legislative History Tables) Are No More

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Hello!
On the day that the new E-Laws site went live, I sent them an email to ask where I could find the Detailed Legislative History Tables.
Here is their reply:

Dear Ms. Demers:

Thank you for your e-mail concerning the new e-Laws web site (www.ontario.ca/laws).

Detailed legislative history (DLH) tables are no longer being maintained. As of April 10, 2015, there were 3,971 regulation tables and 998 statute tables, which were regularly being updated manually in Word format. In their current format, the DLH tables could not meet the web accessibility requirements set out under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2005.

An alternative approach to providing provision-level and other more detailed legislative history information in an accessible format, using a more streamlined and automated process, is being developed. In the meantime, some provision-level legislative history may be found in the footnotes following provisions in the consolidated versions of laws on e-Laws. Provision-level history can also be tracked by comparing historical (period in time) versions of laws, where available on e-Laws. Information on when bills were enacted or regulations filed may be found on the source law versions of the applicable laws. Higher-level legislative history continues to be shown in the Table of Public statutes and ministers responsible, the Table of Regulations, and the Table of Private statutes.

Although the DLH tables will no longer be updated on e-Laws, archived versions of the tables (as they appeared on April 10, 2015) have been made available for download on the Legislative Tables page on e-Laws, for those wishing to continue to track legislative history in that format themselves. Here is a link to the Legislative Tables page: http://www.ontario.ca/laws/legislative-tables The download links are found under the heading “Detailed Legislative History Tables”.

Yours truly
e-Laws

I’d encourage everyone to send feedback to https://www.ontario.ca/contact-us

Comments

  1. John G
    April 21st, 2015 at 6:45 am

    What is your own feedback? Do you find the official explanation unsatisfactory? Why? Do you think it is a good use of your tax dollars to have a number of people in the Office of Legislative Counsel to be manually updating 5000 tables, in a format that will in any event have to be changed to meet accessibility standards? Could law libraries pool their resources and maintain the tables, if they are useful to the profession?

  2. David Collier-Brown
    April 21st, 2015 at 12:52 pm

    I wrote:
    Please don’t just throw away the Detailed legislative history (DLH) tables project: extract the data and publish it in raw form, and let the volunteer “large data” community pretty it up for use.

  3. Simon Shields
    June 7th, 2015 at 2:33 am

    I dislike hugely what they’ve done with the whole e-laws database interface. In past I’d used the detailed legislative tables to update my website regularly and having them disappear was a trauma. Since then I’ve jury-rigged a very simple amend history using the search function. You can see a sample here (click on the ‘Legislative Table’ links):

    http://www.isthatlegal.ca/index.php?name=currency.tenant_law_ontario

    You still have to wade through the amending statutes for sections amended and in-force dates, but it’s adequate for my use.

    …….

    Also why on earth isn’t period-in-time law an option right off the e-laws homepage?