Calculating Time under the new Interpretation Act

On January 1, 2019, British Columbia rolled out a set of revisions to the Interpretation Act.

The Interpretation Act is a law about laws – it provides rules that govern how people should read and understand other enactments, including the Family Law Act and the Supreme Court Family Rules that govern much of the court processes of family law.

One of the issues covered by the Interpretation Act is the calculation of time. Deadlines and due dates crop up all over family law, and missing them can cause problems for your case. So knowing how to understand the rules when they give a due date is critical.

Clear days, muddied

There are two kinds of days.

Under the Interpretation Act, there are two ways to calculate time: normally or by “clear” days.

Clear days appear whenever a statute says a period of time is to be counted in “clear” days (or weeks, or months, or years), or says that the deadline is “at least” or “no less than” a certain period.

If the rule does not have that specific language of “clear,” “at least,” or “no less than,” then the deadline is determined using the normal rules.

So what are the rules, and how have they changed?

The Old Rules

Under the old rules, normal calculation of time is done by excluding the first day and including the last day from the period of time. For clear days, both the first and last days are excluded from the period of time.

The New Rules

Under the new rules, normal calculation of time is done by counting forward from and including the day after the reference day

Counting forward 7 days from April 30:
30    1    2    3    4    5    6    7
_       1    2    3    4    5    6    7

The deadline is May 7

Counting backwards 7 days from April 30:
22    23    24    25    27    28    29    30
7        6      5      4      3      2       1      _

The deadline is April 22.

For clear days, time is calculated by using the same formula as above, but counting forward or backward one more day.
Counting forward 7 clear days from April 30:
30    1    2    3    4    5    6    7    8
_       1    2    3    4    5    6    7   +1

The deadline is May 8.

Counting backward 7 clear days from April 30:
21    22    23    24    25    27    28    29    30
+1     7      6       5      4      3      2       1      _

The deadline is April 21.

The end result is the same. Although different language is used to reach the deadline, the old and new rules arrive at the same result.

For the most part.

Weekends & Holidays

Under the old rules, when a deadline falls on a weekend or holiday, the deadline shifts forward to the next day that is not a holiday.

Under the new rules, if the day falls on a weekend or holiday, then the deadline shifts outwards from the reference day until you arrive at a non-holiday.

The result? When counting forwards and landing on a holiday, the results are the same under the old and new rules – keep going forwards until you arrive at the next non-holiday.

So, if you are given a deadline of 12 days after a reference day, and upon counting out the days you land on a Sunday, under old rules and new rules alike the deadline shifts to the next non-holiday – the following Monday.

However, when it comes to counting backwards, the rules now differ.

When counting backwards and landing on a holiday, under the old rules you would stop counting backwards and go forwards to the next non-holiday, while under the new rules you would keep counting backwards.

So, if given a deadline of 12 days before a reference day, and counting out the days you land on a Sunday, under the old rules the deadline would shift to the following Monday, while under the new rules the deadline would shift to the preceding Friday.

This change seems small, but it matters.

Under the Supreme Court Family Rules there are more than 40 Rules whose deadlines are clear days determined by counting backwards, many of which are expressed in increments of 7 clear days. And as trials are often scheduled to begin on a Monday, this results in a lot of deadlines that would fall on a Sunday. Where once these days would have gone to the following Monday, now they all will be pushed to the preceding Friday.

That is a lot of opportunities for lawyers who are used to the old Rules to miss a deadline.

Want to see the changes yourself? You can find the current Interpretation Act here, and the changes made can be found here.