Program directory · Department of Justice Canada

Legislative Services

Department: Department of Justice Canada
Program code: BNX02 (JUS)
Core responsibility: Legal Services
In Departmental Plans: 2018-19 – 2026-27 · New since an earlier plan

What it does

This program provides bilingual and bijural legislative services to the government, including the drafting of government bills, government motions to amend bills before Parliament and proposed regulations and other statutory instruments. This program is also responsible, on behalf of the Minister of Justice, for ensuring that Government bills, regulations and other statutory instruments are reviewed in accordance with the Department of Justice Act, the Canadian Bill of Rights, and the Statutory Instruments Act. The program also provides legislative editing, linguistic comparison and bijural review of statutes and regulations as part of the drafting process and is responsible for harmonizing those texts with respect to principles, concepts and institutions of the civil law of Quebec and of the common law applicable elsewhere in Canada. The program is also responsible for the official publication of statutes following royal assent as well as the updating, consolidation and publication of an official electronic version of the federal statutes and regulations.

Source: the department's Program Inventory, via GC InfoBase.

History and lineage

First appears in GC InfoBase's actual spending by program in 2018-19. The data does not record when a program was created; it may be older than its first appearance here, which is limited by the sources (program spending starts in 2010-11, Departmental Plans in 2018-19).

Bars: spending by fiscal year (dark: actual; light: actual restated on the 2017-18 program structure; outlined: the latest plan's forecast; grey: related programs). Bands: each program in the lineage over the years it has data.

Program	Relation	Years with data	Actual spending over those years
Legislative Services	This program	2018-19 – 2028-29	$117M

No earlier or later program in the same department has a similar name.

Significant changes in scope and budget

Detected from the data: renames between plans, programs it appears to replace, merge with or split into (matched by name), year-over-year changes in spending of at least 25% and $5M, or in employees of at least 20% and 25 FTEs, linked budget measures, and results indicators added or dropped.

Year	What changed	Source
2022-23	Indicators added: Client satisfaction mean rating on the overall quality of legislative services; Client satisfaction mean rating on the responsiveness of legislative services; Client satisfaction mean rating on the timeliness of legislative services; Client satisfaction mean rating on the usefulness of legislative services	Departmental Results Framework (GC InfoBase)
2022-23	Indicators dropped: Client satisfaction mean rating of 8.0 (or greater) on a 10-point scale on the overall quality of legal services.; Client satisfaction mean rating of 8.0 (or greater) on a 10-point scale on the performance of legal services against the Service Standards for the Provision of Legal Services in Government.	Departmental Results Framework (GC InfoBase)
2022-23	Spending $17.2M, against $11.4M in 2021-22 (+52%).	Actual spending (GC InfoBase)
2024-25	Spending $30.2M, against $21.5M in 2023-24 (+40%).	Actual spending (GC InfoBase)
2026-27	Planned employees (FTEs) 183, against 233 in 2025-26 (−21%).	FTEs (GC InfoBase)

Success criteria

The program's indicators from its department's Departmental Results Framework: the target set in each year's plan, and the result reported the following year. Source: GC InfoBase.