Answered By: Jonathan Faerber (he/him/his)
Last Updated: Nov 03, 2023     Views: 2574

As companion resources to federal and provincial statutes, regulations follow a similar citation and reference format as do laws. The citation and reference elements for regulations identify the title, identifying number, and year the regulation was passed. The format for the identifying number and year depend on whether the regulation is provincial or federal, as the following two examples demonstrate:

Provincial Sales Tax Regulations, BC Reg 6/2013.
Canada Occupational Health and Safety Regulations, SOR/86-304.

Each of the above references conclude with the identifying number of the regulation as well as the full year for regulations passed after the year 2000 (e.g., 2013), or the last two digits of years preceding the year 2000 (e.g., 96) (McGill Law Journal, 2023, E-30). See the list below for these elements in each of the above reference examples:

a) Name of regulation: Provincial Sales Tax Regulations, Canada Occupational Health and Safety Regulations
b) Abbreviated name of source (British Columbia Regulations, Statutory Orders and Regulations): BC Reg, SOR
c) Identifying number and year: 96/2013, 86-304

For further sample references, please also review the list of examples under "Legislation" in the University of British Columbia's Legal Citation Guide, and for information on citing legislation, please see How Do I Cite and Reference a Law?

For general information on McGill Guide (10th ed.) legal citations and references, please see the resources in the Writing Centre's Legal Citation Guide.

Reference

McGill Law Journal. (2023). Canadian guide to uniform legal citation (10th ed.). Thomson Reuters.