Common law and legislation.

The term 'common law' can mean more than one thing. It can be used to distinguish the English legal heritage from le droit civil that was brought to Quebec from France. But, people also use the term `common law' to distinguish the law expressed in decided cases from the law set out in legislation enacted by the country's politicians. These statutes, or Acts, as they are usually called in their titles, give power either to the cabinet or to the ministry responsible for the statute to make rules for putting its provisions into effect. These rules are called regulations; regulations and statutes together are called legislation.

Legislation can be used to change common law, or to deal with areas in which case law is unclear or unlikely to be helpful. Often, when governments pass legislation that changes common law significantly, they create a new body to administer the legislation, such as an administrative tribunal, board, or agency. Some of the provinces have passed legislation creating such tribunals to deal with disputes between landlords and tenants. Other examples of tribunals found in all of the provinces and territories are workers' compensation and employment standards boards, human rights commissions, labour boards, various marketing boards, liquor licensing agencies, film censorship boards, social welfare review boards, and so on. Advantages of a specialized tribunal are that it allows its members to develop decision-making expertise in that area and brings the administration of the law closer to the people.

A law is changed only if the change is politically acceptable to the party in power. The change might be based on the study of a government department, a legislitive committee, a Royal Commission, or the suggestion of a lobby group, or member of Parliament or legislative assembly.