For an introduction to e-Laws generally, please watch the tutorial titled "e-Laws: An Introduction." This tutorial is intended to delve into the differences between source and consolidated law on e-Laws, and help you decide when each source is the appropriate one to address your research problem. Every year, Ontario makes many regulations and statutes.

Regulations are printed in the Ontario Gazette throughout the year, as they are filed.

Statutes are printed in the annual Statutes of Ontario, which usually take a year or two to come out as a bound volume.

However, you can access statutes and regulations on e-Laws within a couple days of them being filed, in the case of regulations, or receiving royal assent, in the case of statutes, by using the Source Law section.

Out of the many piece of legislation produced every year, only a few are truly new, in the sense that they create an entirely new act or regulation that stands alone. Most acts and regulations simply amend one or more pre-existing pieces of legislation. 

Statutes and regulations that create entirely new pieces of legislation essentially appear twice on e-Laws: once in their as-passed form in the source-law section of the site, and again in the consolidated part of the site. When a new act or regulation moves from source to consolidated, it tends to drop some sections, usually any in-force sections, repeals or amendments of other acts, or transitional sections. 

Statutes and regulations that simply amend pre-existing pieces of legislation only appear once, in source law. Their content appears in the consolidated law, as amendments to other acts, but they themselves, as individual entities, do not. 

So, what does this mean for you?

If you want to see what a particular, non-amending act looks like today, you need to work with consolidated law. Watch the tutorial on consolidated law for detailed information on how to use this section of e-Laws. If you want to see a piece of legislation in its "as passed" form, such as to see the wording of transitional provisions or what previous act or regulation was repealed by it, you need to look at the source law version of the act or regulation. 

Note that acts may be listed under different names in the two sections of e-Laws. Some source laws can be classified as omnibus bills. They amend or create multiple acts. Currently Ontario seems to be moving in the direction of passing a single statute that contains multiple schedules, each of which is a new act. Therefore, the annual statute will have one name, but it will create multiple acts with various titles that move into the consolidated law section. A good example of this is the Health Systems Improvement Act from 2007. It appears in source law with that title, but it actually creates a whole basket of new acts that appear in the consolidated law section under their own names. These include the Homeopathy Act, the Kinesiology Act, the Naturopathy and the Psychotherapy Act. 

Now that you know a little more about the differences between source law and consolidated law, you can more easily decide which part of the site you need to be in to find what you want. If you have determined that the information you need is in the consolidated law section of e-Laws, you may wish to watch the next tutorial to gain an in-depth understanding of working with consolidated law.