Enactment Definition:

A law or a statute; a document which is published as an enforceable set of written rules is said to be enacted.

Thus, in R v Conway, a South African case, Justice Gutsche wrote:

"Enactment is not a term of art and means any measure ordained and promulgated by any person or body possessing legislative authority."

But in Wakefield Light Railways v Wakefield, Justice Ridley wrote:

"The word enactment does not mean the same thing as Act. Act means the whole Act whereas a section or part of a section in an Act may be an enactment."

To avoid the complexities associated with such judicial hair-splitting, we now have, in Canada, the Interpretation Act (2011) which presents, at §1:

"Enactment means an Act or regulation or any portion of an Act or regulation."

On that basis, therefore, and in Wilkin v. White, Justice Bouck found that the word enactment included a municipal by-law.

In Re Roberts, Master Horn of Nanaimo used these words to define enactment:

"... the common meaning of enactment (is) any document which enacts a law... a thing which is enacted; an ordinance, a statute."

REFERENCES:

• Interpretation Act, RSC 1985, c I-21
• Re Roberts, 2001 BCSC 1080
• R v Conway, 1943 EDL 215 (South Africa)
• Wakefield & District Light Railways Company v Wakefield Corporation, [1906] 2 KB 140
• Wilkin v. White,108 D.L.R. (3d) 468 (1979, BCSC)