Parliamentary Counsel

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Instructions in narrative form

The starting place for all instructions is that a Bill can do only one thing. It can change the law. The author of instructions should keep this and the discussion in that paragraph constantly in mind.

Instructions need to be in narrative form. That means that they should explain what is wanted, not try to set it out in the form of a draft.

OPC does not welcome “instructions in the form of a draft”; but it is important to explain why that is. It is not a demarcation matter. It is because the drafter needs instructions that do not inhibit the proper performance of the drafter’s functions.

The difficulty for a drafter with instructions in the form of a draft is that they say no more about what they are trying to do than what would actually be achieved if the draft were enacted. If it is a good draft, it will do the trick. But there is no way of telling if it has done what it was trying to do. If instructions in the form of a draft contain even a minor drafting error, that could seriously mislead the person instructed. So a drafter needs to have the department’s intended outcomes explained in a way that can be used as something against which the OPC draft (when there is one) can be tested.

In many ways, the task of writing clear instructions is as skilled as the drafting of the Bill. The narrative form does not justify any departure from a rigorously accurate analysis of what is required.