What We Check Before You Read
Legal information in Canada has to earn its keep twice. Once because the law here is provincial before it is national, so the true answer to most everyday legal questions begins with "in which province?". And once because Quebec's civil law tradition means even the shape of the answer can change at one border. A guide that ignores either fact is not information, it is a guess wearing a citation. So before any guide is published on this site, it passes the same sequence of checks. Here is that sequence, in the order it runs.
The source check
Every legal statement must trace to a primary source we opened: the current text of the statute or regulation as amended, the rules of the court or tribunal, or an official government publication. Summaries, aggregators and other sites' retellings do not qualify. And reading means reading: a citation that loads is not yet a citation that supports a claim, so we read the surrounding text and confirm the provision actually governs the situation we describe. Where the only available figure is secondary, a fee survey for instance, the guide names that source in the text rather than absorbing the number into our own voice.
The province check
Limitation periods, court procedure, employment standards, tenancy rules, family law process: these genuinely diverge between provinces and territories, and again between Quebec and the common law provinces. Our guides state province-specific rules only for the provinces we verified against that province's own authority, and they name those provinces. For the rest, the guide gives the general position and shows you how to find your province's controlling source. Filling in a map by extrapolation is how readers get hurt, and we do not do it.
The cost check
Fear of fees keeps many Canadians from getting help at all, so cost is treated as a first-class subject. Figures are ranges in Canadian dollars, dated with the year they refer to, and attributed by name when they come from surveys rather than authorities. We explain hourly, flat and contingency arrangements in plain terms. We do not predict what your matter will cost, because no honest page can.
The plain-language check
Every legal term is defined at first use. Every guide draws the line between legal information, which we provide, and legal advice, which only a lawyer retained on your facts can give. When the honest answer is that you need a lawyer, the guide says so and points you toward your province's law society, whose directories and referral services exist for exactly that moment. Our guides are published in English; much of Canada's official legal material, federal law among it, is available in both official languages, and we point you to those sources so you can read them in either.
The second pass
Before publication, every guide is fact-checked independently of its writing. That pass re-opens the cited statutes and sources and verifies every citation, number, date and name against them. Nothing goes live on the strength of anyone's memory.
The standing checks
Some checks never stop running. Each guide carries a dated line stating when its facts were last verified, and its visible updated date changes only when the law or the facts changed, never for cosmetics. Errors are corrected in the guide itself, where they occurred, with a dated note. And some lines hold permanently: we do not predict the outcome of anyone's case, we do not invent clients or fabricate quotes from lawyers, and we do not accuse named firms or individuals of wrongdoing. If you believe a guide misstates the law of your province, use the site's contact page and identify the guide and the claim. We will check it against the primary sources, and a confirmed error receives a dated correction.