ABSTRACT
As Driedger has pointed out,35 if Parliamentary Counsel receives a draft, he must construe and interpret what may be an imperfect statement, and he may misunderstand what is intended. A draftsman who is presented with a draft measure would not be discharging his duties if he assumed that a proper legislative plan had been conceived and that proper provisions had been chosen to carry it out; he cannot be expected to confine himself merely to a superficial examination of the outward form of the measure … Even assuming that a perfect bill is submitted to the draftsman, he must still subject it to the complete drafting process, for how else can he discover that it is a perfect bill and satisfy himself that it will give legislative effect to the intended policy? Draft measures prepared by inexperienced persons are usually defective, and then the draftsman must spend much time in undoing what has been done. And from Westminster36 comes the stern warning that, Nothing is more hampering to Parliamentary Counsel, when the drafting stage is reached, than to be obliged to build what is usually a complex structure round ‘sacred phrases’ or forms of words which have become sacrosanct by reason of their having been agreed upon in Cabinet or in one of its committees. A still more serious objection to agreed form of words of this kind is that they often turn out to represent agreement upon words only, concealing the fact that no real compromise or decision has been reached between conflicting views upon some important question.
