“When it comes into force in 2025, the Money Judgment Enforcement Act will make it easier and less costly for people to get the money owed to them through the courts or tribunals, such as the Residential Tenancy Branch or Civil Resolution Tribunal (CRT).”
OK, so it’s been a minute since the Government of British Columbia released this MJEA news, and while Bill 27 – 2023 may have obtained Royal Assent in October of 2023, and was supposed to come into force in 2025, it is clearly a big job to implement.
Bringing MJEA into force requires more than a flick of the Lieutenant Governor in Council’s pen. It requires more than just amending or repealing provisions in 36 other B.C. Acts across eight ministries spanning a sweeping range of laws, from land title and personal property security to employment standards, pensions, family maintenance enforcement and the CRT. Indeed, that’s just the paper work.
There is a crushing amount of technology to adapt or construct, a new registry to build, banks and bailiffs to coordinate, and further down the pipeline, a bottleneck of published guidance to furiously update.
It’s a nice time to be Courthouse Libraries BC, actually. Tracking vast and complex legislative changes is really what the librarians’ wheelhouse involves, and we spend a surprising amount of time making this easier for the lawyers.
As you know, an Act may come into force on Royal Assent, on a date pre-specified in the legislation, by regulation (as is the case with the MJEA), or through some combination of those methods.
Courthouse Libraries BC maintains a tool specifically for tracking when laws come into force, and we work with specialist vendors like Quickscribe to ensure this is even easier for you.
CLBC’s “BC Proclamations” service is our cumulative list of B.C. laws brought into force by regulation since January 2009. When an Order in Council comes our way (information is supplied weekly by the Registrar of Regulations in Victoria), our clients can follow new proclamations through an RSS feed or via CLBC's email service.
With our Quickscribe subscription, library users can also set custom alerts for specific Bills and proclamations that bring existing Acts into force.
It is worth adding a law librarian's caveat: not every Act requires a proclamation. “Proclamations” is convenient shorthand for legislation brought into force by regulation, but checking commencement properly means examining the Act itself, regulations, legislative-change tables and sometimes several pieces of amending legislation. Our B.C. legislation guide walks researchers through the different ways an Act can come into force.
And while you are waiting for the MJEA to come into force, CLBC has substantial resources to guide you. CLEBC's British Columbia Creditors’ Remedies: An Annotated Guide is available at any branch, via a public access computer. It covers preliminary considerations and searches through prejudgment garnishment, post judgment remedies, charging orders and receivers, bankruptcy remedies in the collection process, fraudulent transactions, priorities and acting for the debtor. It also has practical tools, such as checklists, forms, precedents. If you like paper, CLBC holds the second edition at numerous locations around the province.
There are other tools as well. Practice Before the Registrar covers proceedings including subpoena-to-debtor hearings and applications under the Court Order Enforcement Act.
Eventually, the MJEA itself will be a conspicuous alert in our BC Proclamations service. We invite you to call, email or visit us in advance if you want to be a witness when that happens.
And when any legislation becomes mysterious, please remember that you do not have to sleuth alone.
