 This is Wei Lingqiao. Welcome to Legal Fundamentals, Module 1, Part A. In this part, I will give you a brief introduction to law by looking at what is a law, examining the differences between the two legal systems that we have in Canada, the common law system and the civil law system, examining the difference between a public law versus a private law, and then looking at the different sources of law that we have in Canada. What is law? Law is similar to rules. Law is also similar to morality or ethics. The key distinction is that with laws, laws are rules that can be enforced by courts. Let's look first at rules versus laws. So we can say that all laws are rules, but not all rules are laws. There are many rules that we are subjected to in our day-to-day lives that are not considered to be laws. For example, whenever we play a sport like soccer, there are many rules that apply when we play that sport. A big rule in soccer is that you're not allowed to touch the ball with your hands. So if you break that rule, that rule is not enforceable by courts. If you don't go to court to say that the other player touched the ball with their hand, that rule is enforced by the referee. Now with morality or ethics compared to law, when we commit a moral wrong, a moral wrong is something that goes against some kind of moral rule that a person holds. So if you lie to your friends, there are what we call informal sanctions. So these are informal or undefined consequences that flow from the moral wrong that you committed. So if you lie to your friends, you might lose them as a friend or it could also damage your reputation. So none of those consequences are specifically spelled out anymore. That's what makes them informal. If you commit a legal wrong, if you break a law, there are specific consequences. There are what we call formal sanctions. So if you break a law by committing a theft, there are specific consequences that flow from that. It could be imprisonment or payment or payment of a fine. In Canada, we have the civil law system and the common law system. The civil law system is found only in Quebec. Quebec is the only Canadian civil law jurisdiction. In every other province, we find the common law system. Now when we use the word jurisdiction, just to take a step back here, we mean a particular geographical area that uses the same set of laws. So each province in Canada, it could be considered to be a jurisdiction because each provincial government passes laws that apply anywhere in the particular province. The whole of Canada could be considered one jurisdiction as well because federal laws apply anywhere in Canada. A municipality could also be considered a jurisdiction in terms of the bylaws that a municipality passes. Now with the civil law system, civil law traces its history all the way back to ancient Rome and particular France. The civil law system, without getting into a deep discussion about it, is essentially based on a code of legal principles. The common law system traces its history back to England. So any country that used to be a colony of England is likely to have a common law system. For example, Australia, New Zealand and also here in Canada and also the United States is also a common law jurisdiction. The distinctive characteristic of the common law system is that there is much greater reliance on what we call judge-made case law. We look very carefully at the written decisions of previous courts in making decisions in current cases. And what that legal approach is called is called the doctrine of precedent. There are many different areas of law but we can categorize every area into either public law or private law. Public law is defined as law that regulates our relationship with government and private law regulates personal, social and business relationships. Let's now do a quick quiz to illustrate the difference between public law and private law. On the left hand side of the screen you will find different areas of law and your challenge is to determine whether each of these areas is public law or private law. Please pause the video at this point so that you can attempt this quiz. Constitutional law is considered to be public law. Constitutional law are the rules that set up our political and legal system and also rules that protect our basic rights and freedoms against government laws or actions. That in Canada we call the Charter of Rights and Freedoms which we will discuss a little bit later. So those rules regulate our relationship with government so that's why it's considered to be public law. Contract law is considered to be private law. So these are the rules that govern the creation and enforcement of agreements between individuals and businesses. So that is private law because private law are rules that regulate the relationship between individuals, businesses and organizations. Property law is also considered to be private law. Property law are the rules that regulate the ownership of property so that is private law. Tax law is considered to be public law. These are the rules regarding the collection of monies by government from individuals and businesses. So when do we have to file tax for and how much tax do we need to pay? So that has to do with money that we pay to government so that's public law. Tort law are the rules that determine liability arising from what we call a private wrong committed by one person against another. In a future module we will talk in detail about various torts. Tort law is considered to be private law. Criminal law, so these are laws that set out particular behaviors as offenses against the state. So they could be, for example, murder, theft, fraud, those are all examples of criminal offenses. So criminal law is considered to be public law. Criminal law, every time you commit a criminal offense it's considered to be an offense against the state. Even though there might be a victim for that crime strictly speaking from a legal standpoint the offense is against the state so that's why it's considered to be public law. The last area of law that we have here is called administrative law. So a lot of administrative law are rules that the government has set to regulate business using government agencies or boards or commissions or tribunals. So some of the areas that administrative law regulates is broadcasting, international trade, energy development competition, labor relations and municipal zoning. So administrative law is considered to be public law. One point to keep in mind is that a number of different areas of law can apply to the same situation. For example, for some reason you punch me in the face. I don't know why you might do that but you did. The applicable areas of law there are criminal law. I could call the police and the police could charge you with the crime of assault. So that's criminal law and criminal law if you remember is considered to be public law. Tort law could also apply. Tort law is considered to be private law. I could sue you under tort law for the tort of battery and claim damages for the injuries I suffered from you striking my face. So in that one situation we have both criminal law and tort law applying or in other words both public law and private law applying to the same situation. The three sources of law that we have in Canada are the constitution, legislation and the courts. The constitution we will examine later on in this module. In this part of the module we'll look at legislation or what's also called government made law and also the third source the courts. Legislation is often referred to as government made law. It is law that is created by any type of government in Canada. The federal government, provincial government or a municipal government. Those governments are in particular the federal parliament and provincial legislatures in creating laws are using the powers given to it under the division of powers in the constitution which we discussed in the previous module. The three types of legislation are statutes, regulations and bylaws. Statutes are laws made by either the federal parliament in Ottawa or a provincial legislature. The provincial legislature for Ontario is the one located at Queens Park in Toronto. Either the parliament in making law or provincial legislature they are exercising the law making powers given to it under the constitution in the division of powers. Any statute, the name of any statute will have the word act at the end. So anytime you see the word act you know it's a statute. For example, the federal parliament has created the statute which governs banking in Canada called the bank act. The process of creating a statute is a long and complicated one. There is a similar but slightly different process for the federal parliament versus a provincial legislature. You will have a simplified overview of the federal process, a federal legislative process. At the very beginning of the process the proposed statute is called a bill. So that bill is introduced in the House of Commons which is a part of the federal parliament. The House of Commons will examine that bill. They will vote on it three times. So those are called first, second and third readings. In between those readings there will be one or more committees made up of members of parliament who will examine the bill in detail. After the House of Commons has approved the bill in third reading the bill is passed on to the Senate. The Senate does something very similar to what the House of Commons did. It will vote on it three times with a first, second and third reading and it will also review the bill in detail by groups of committees. After the Senate has approved the bill the very last step and this is usually just a formal step that occurs but it is a necessary step to make the bill into law. And that step is sending the bill over to the Governor General. The Governor General is the representative of the Queen in Canada. The Governor General just simply signs the bill upon signing which is called royal assent. The bill becomes law. It becomes an act at that very moment. The second type of legislation or government made law is called regulations. The way to think about regulations is by looking at statutes as containing all of the general rules and then the specific rules that we need to implement those general rules are found in the regulations. For example, in the Income Tax Act which is a statute created by the federal parliament it requires that employers deduct tax from employees' pay. Now to determine the actual amount of tax or the formula to determine the amount of tax that has to be deducted we can't find that in the Income Tax Act. We find that in the Income Tax Regulations. Now you're probably asking yourself why do we make life so complicated by having two sets of rules in two different places? We have to look in more than one place to figure out how much tax we need to deduct. The reason that we have the specific rules and the regulations instead of the statute is that the regulations are much easier to change and quicker to change than statutes. To change a statute or to create a statute we have to go through that legislative process that we looked at in the previous slide. And that legislative process is complicated. It's long and it's also quite often very political. The process of creating or changing regulations in comparison is very quick and is usually not political. So if the government needs to change the rules or the formulas for determining tax the amount of tax that needs to be deducted from an employee's pay they can easily do that if those rules are contained in the Income Tax Regulations versus the Income Tax Act. Now who has the power to make or change regulations? To determine that we have to look at the specific statute and see what it says. Who does it give that power to? That power is usually given to a government minister or a specific commission or a tribunal. Regulations are considered to be subordinate legislation. The third type of legislation in Canada is called bylaws. Bylaws are created by municipal councils. If you recall in the previous module where we talked about the division of powers under the Constitution the Constitution gives the provinces the power to create municipalities. Whenever a province creates a municipality in that process the province has to pass on some power to the municipality that gives the municipality the ability to make its own laws which are called bylaws. So bylaws are also considered to be subordinate legislation. For example, for the City of Toronto way back when the Ontario legislature passed a statute called the City of Toronto Act and that act created the City of Toronto and also gave powers to the City Council of Toronto to pass bylaws on various specific matters which would include things that cities typically deal with like parking rules, zoning, municipal zoning. So anything that the city has the power to do that power came from the province. Let's now look at a quick quiz question. Please pause this video so you can consider this question. The answer is C bylaw. The town of Blackville created a set of rules for the licensing of businesses. Those rules are considered to be bylaws. Bylaws are laws created or passed by municipalities. The third and last source of law in Canada is the courts. The courts in Canada perform various functions. One function is to interpret and apply the constitution. So remember the constitution includes both the rules governing the division of powers and also the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Another function is to interpret and apply legislation. So legislation would include statutes, regulations, and bylaws. The courts, and this third one is something that's not obvious to most people. The courts themselves can also create and apply its own law, which we call common law, or a more simpler way of referring to it is judge-made law. For example, many of the rules that govern contract law do not come from any kind of government legislation. It doesn't come from any act or regulation or bylaw. Many of these rules, like for example, the rules that govern the creation of contracts, those rules come from legal principles in many previous and older cases written by judges. So over the years, many of these legal principles have been developed from case to case in order to create a general set of rules which govern contract law.