Ontario · Building Code · 1998–2024
Search by date, not by edition — back to April 1998, years before the online consolidation record begins. Every provision comes back with the regulation and the clause that made it read that way.
Try fire separation between dwelling units, Ontario, 2010 guards and handrails for a stairway
I · Coverage
One edition ends the day the next begins, and the changeover is covered from both sides — because during a transition two editions’ versions genuinely co-exist, and a search dated inside that window returns both.
The earliest e-Laws consolidation of the Code we can check against is June 28, 2006. Everything before that date is reconstructed from the amending regulations as filed in The Ontario Gazette, and is the part of this corpus that exists nowhere else online. Ontario only, for now. An edition is listed here only once every regulation that amended it has been parsed and applied — the same gate the Sources page reports.
II · How we know it is right
A reconstruction you cannot check is only an assertion. So the Code is rebuilt from the regulations — and then rebuilt a second time by a completely different method. The two results are compared provision by provision, version by version, before anything is published.
Start at the base regulation that enacts the edition, then apply what each amending regulation actually instructs — revoke this, substitute that, add these words here — in filing order. This is the corpus you search.
Ontario republishes the consolidated Code every time an amendment takes effect. Read those snapshots in order and the differences between them are the amendment history — recovered without reading a single directive.
The two reconstructions agree.
Every provision. Every version. Every date in the edition’s life.
Not every difference is an error. Ontario sometimes restyles text no regulation touched, or prints a change before the day it commences. Each of those is classified, named and reviewed by hand — never averaged into a margin of error, never quietly patched. This is the whole vocabulary — and which entries can arise at all depends on the era, since the table and OCR classes belong to the years that survive only as scanned paper:
editorial-drift
e-Laws restyled the text — bolding, spacing, an added colon — where no regulation said to
See 1.4.1.2. Div. A OBC 2006
elaws-advance-notice
e-Laws printed an amendment before the day it commenced
See 1.3.1.2. Div. B OBC 2006
elaws-note-marker-spacing
a footnote marker set as a superscript rather than plain text
See 9.12.2.2. Div. B OBC 2006
elaws-drops-revoked-subtree
e-Laws stopped printing a provision whose parent was revoked
See 2.11.1. OBC 1997
Pro
Never arose in OBC 2006 · seen in 1997
revoked-before-effect
a provision was revoked before its own commencement arrived
See 4.1.2. Div. C OBC 2012
Pro
Never arose in OBC 2006 · seen in 1997, 2012
elaws-table-reformat
the same table, laid out differently
See 10.3.2.2. Div. B OBC 2012
Pro
Never arose in OBC 2006 · seen in 1997, 2012
elaws-table-header-merge
two table header rows combined into one
See 3.1.4.7. Div. B OBC 2012
Pro
Never arose in OBC 2006 · seen in 2012
elaws-rendering-omission
content the consolidation page did not render at all
See 1.4.1.2. Div. A OBC 2012
Pro
Never arose in OBC 2006 · seen in 1997, 2012
elaws-notes-reflow
notes moved on the page, with no change of wording
See 11.2.1.1. OBC 1997
Pro
Never arose in OBC 2006 · seen in 1997
table-format
a table's structure recovered differently from the scan
See 3.12.4.5. OBC 1997
Pro
Never arose in OBC 2006 · seen in 1997
non-keyword-table-ocr
OCR noise in a scanned table we show as the page image — it never reaches what you read
See 3.1.13.7. OBC 1997
Pro
Never arose in OBC 2006 · seen in 1997
An edition is published only after that review closes. Where the record itself is genuinely silent — most often the punctuation joining a phrase an amendment inserts into a list — we say so on the provision and state the convention we used: how inserted phrases are punctuated.
III · What that buys you
Type the question the way you would ask a colleague — “fire separation between a garage and a house, 2009”. The date is not a filter applied afterwards; it selects the versions that were actually in force that day, across every edition then live.
Every provision carries its own history: what it said, over which dates, and the exact regulation — down to the clause — that made each change. Amendments are shown as redlines, so you can see precisely which words moved.
Article 1.1.2.4., “Application of Part 9”
Provenance
OBC 1997 · renumbered from 2.1.1.3. — Pro
Base · O. Reg. 350/06 · ext v0 → compare
O. Reg. 137/07, cl. 1 · ext v1 →
In force 2007-04-02 compare
O. Reg. 503/09, cl. 2 · ext ← current
In force 2010-01-01
OBC 2012 · continues as 1.1.2.4. — Pro
Each result carries a verification rail: a band running the length of the version’s life, marked with the consolidations that independently vouch for it and where your date falls among them. You can see how directly the text is confirmed, not just that we say it is.
240. (1) Subject to subsections (2), (3), (4), (5), (6) and (7), this Regulation comes into force on the later of January 1, 2010 and the day this Regulation is filed.
Read directly from the regulation's own commencement section.
O. Reg. 503/09 · commencement 240(1)
This version stayed in force until the next edition replaced it. What follows is that edition’s base regulation’s commencement — the takeover that ended this one.
(1) Subject to Sentences (2) and (3), this Regulation comes into force on January 1, 2014.
Read directly from the regulation's own commencement section.
O. Reg. 332/12 · commencement 4.4.1.1(1)
“Subject to Article 1.3.1.2.” is a dead reference on a printed consolidation — you go and look it up, and you look up whichever version is on the page you land on. Here it is a link, to the version in force on your date. Where the cited provision changed while the citing one stood still, you get each version it could mean, rather than a silent guess.
(1) Subject to Articles 1.1.2.6. and 1.3.1.2.v2, Part 9 of Division B applies to all buildings,
Two links, one chip: 1.3.1.2. changed while 1.1.2.4. stood still, so both readings are offered
Every version is a stable permalink, and every regulation links out to where it was published — e-Laws for the modern record, scans of The Ontario Gazette for the years before e-Laws went online. Nothing here asks to be taken on trust.
Every regulation says where it was published, and links there
IV · The corpus
Read from the same database the search runs against, on every page load. If it is in this table, you can search it.
| Edition | In force from | Until | Amending regs |
|---|---|---|---|
| OBC 1997 | Apr 6, 1998 | Dec 30, 2006 | 20 |
| OBC 2006 | Dec 31, 2006 | Dec 31, 2013 | 8 |
| OBC 2012 | Jan 1, 2014 | Dec 31, 2024 | 28 |
9,750 provisions · 11,365 versions · 56 amending regulations · where the data comes from
CodeChronicle covers the Ontario Building Code from 1997. Tell us the code and the year you work with, and we will tell you when it lands.
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Not legal advice. Legislative text © King’s Printer for Ontario, reproduced from the published record. CodeChronicle is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Province of Ontario — terms.