Statutory Duty Compliance Act
Drafted 2 September 2026 · federal text in Senate public bill form, with a mirror text for the Legislative Assembly of Ontario · not yet filed
A duty with no date by which it must be performed is not a duty. It is an intention. This Act supplies the date, states what follows when the date passes, and removes the provision that makes the resulting judgment unenforceable.
The defect
The statute book already contains every mechanism this Act needs. It contains them on one side only.
The same asymmetry repeats across the book: deadlines that bind the person are fixed and short, deadlines that bind the institution are absent, indicative, or extendable by the institution itself.
What the Act does
1. A default period
Where an enactment imposes a duty on a public authority for the benefit of a person and fixes no period for its performance, the period is thirty days. The authority may extend it once, in writing, stating the reason and the new date.
2. Harm is presumed
Failure to perform within the period is deemed to cause harm to the person to whom the duty is owed, whether or not that person can prove a particular loss. The person who was made to wait does not carry the burden of proving what the waiting cost.
3. The judgment is enforceable
An order directing a public authority to pay a person is enforceable in the same manner, and by the same mechanism, as a debt owed by a person to the state. The bar on execution against the Crown does not apply to it.
4. Non-performance becomes an offence, at the outer edge
Part I adds a new offence to the Criminal Code. It is deliberately hard to commit:
122.1 (1) Every public officer who, without lawful excuse, fails to perform a statutory duty within the period fixed by law commits an offence where (a) the officer, or the office the officer heads, has been given a written notice identifying the duty and the day the period expired; and (b) the failure continues for 60 days after the day the notice is given.
(2) An offence is committed under subsection (1) only where the failure constitutes a marked departure from the standard of a reasonably diligent public officer in the circumstances.
(3) For greater certainty, it is not necessary to prove that the public officer acted for a purpose other than the public good, dishonestly, corruptly, or for personal benefit.
Draft text, Part I
Notice first, sixty days to cure, and a marked departure from the standard of a diligent officer. An office that answers the notice never reaches the section.
5. Excuses that the Act refuses to accept
The draft names them, so that they cannot be improvised later: staffing levels, volume of work, absence of an internal procedure, an unwritten policy, and the fact that no one asked twice.
Jurisdiction, stated up front
Parliament legislates for federal institutions and for those who receive federal money. Provincial programs, municipal offices and provincial tribunals are outside the federal text and are covered by the mirror Act for Ontario, which is the same statute with the definitions swapped.
The full text is published here when a sponsor is found and the bill is filed. Nothing on this page has been introduced in any legislature.