- [Rebecca] Hi, I'm Rebecca.
- [Meghan] And I'm Meghan.
- [Rebecca] And in this screen cast we'll show you how to find a relevant section within a BC Statute, view current BC Legislation, view proposed changes to BC Legislation, and how to print and download a custom PDF of an Act.
- [Meghan] To show you all of this, Rebecca has kindly agreed to give me a hand with one of my files. I have a client who's come to me and said he's recently come into trouble with a wildlife officer. He's an avid fisherman who discards salmon heads near his property line and has been reported by a neighbor who claims he's feeding bears. The neighbor apparently has photographs of him disposing of the fish heads from this summer, the summer of 2007, and the summer of 1999. He'd like to know if this is an offense. Rebecca can you help me find what section of the Wildlife Act the offense might be under, and what it might have looked like in the years previous?
- [Rebecca] For sure. Why don't we start with finding the current section of the Wildlife Act to see if feeding bears is an offense? We can also look to see if there are any upcoming or proposed changes to the Wildlife Act.
- [Meghan] That would be great.
- [Rebecca] Let's begin by taking a look at Quickscribe, which is a database available on the public computers here at Courthouse Libraries BC. Once you've opened the site by clicking on the Quickscribe icon on the desktop, enter the title of the Act into the search box on the left-hand side, in this instance the Wildlife Act, and then click on Go. It may look as if nothing has changed on the screen, but a results list has appeared directly underneath the search box. So to see the Wildlife Act, we click on the title, which brings us to the table of contents.
- [Meghan] Very nice. Okay, as I look through I don't see a section jumping out at me. Is there another way that we can search within the Act itself?
- [Rebecca] Yes, at the top of the page there's a search box we can use to search this law using keywords.
- [Meghan] Perfect. Let's try using the term, feed, and see what that pulls up.
- [Rebecca] So using the term, feed, brings up one result, which we can see is Section 33.1 of this Act.
- [Meghan] Okay, this definitely is looking relevant. Hmm, reviewing this Section I see that it's illegal to leave an attractant in an area where there are likely to be people, and in a manner which could attract dangerous wildlife. That's not sounding good. Can we look to see if bears are included in the Act's definition of wildlife? And does the Act define what constitutes an attractant?
- [Rebecca] We can check by looking at the top of the page, where there's a link to the definitions, which opens in a separate window.
- [Meghan] Very nice. Okay, so attractant. Hmm, I see that fish carcasses are specifically included within the definition for attractant. And as for dangerous wildlife, bears are the first animal listed here, so that definitely applies. Not exactly the answer I was hoping for. Now you mentioned before that there's a way to look at proposed changes to the Act. Um, I'm wondering, is there any possibility that this section is gonna change in the near future?
- [Rebecca] Any proposed changes to an act will be listed near the top of the table of contents. Here we can see there are changes proposed to the Wildlife Act by the Animal Health Act, which is a bit confusing, but changes to acts are often made by acts with different titles. Clicking on the link will pull up the Animal Health Act, which then takes you directly to the section relating to the Wildlife Act, and list the changes.
- [Meghan] Oh, that's very helpful. Okay, so looking through these, I see that none of these changes look like they apply to Section 33.1. So I know that the current version is likely to be in force for a while, at least. Now if I want to take a copy of Section 33.1 back to the office and show my client, how would I go about doing that?
- [Rebecca] You can download or print a PDF copy of the whole Act by clicking on the top icon, here. Or you can download or print a copy of Section 33.1 by scrolling down and clicking on the PDF icon next to the part that the section is in. We'll leave the document header selected to have that extra information, and then we'll select Section 33.1 and click on Print PDF. From here you have three choices. You can either save it to a USB, save it to My Documents and email it to yourself, or print it.
- [Meghan] Hmm, that looks fantastic.
- [Rebecca] And in the next video we'll take a look at how trace back Section 33.1.
- [Meghan] Perfect. Thanks for your help, Rebecca.
- [Rebecca] You're welcome, Meghan. That brings us to the end of this tutorial. If you have any additional questions please don't hesitate to contact us, here at Courthouse Libraries BC.