Law Reform in Canada: The Impact of the Provincial Law Reform Agencies on Uniformity

It is now generally acknowledged that during the course of the last decade the provincial law reform agencies' have emerged as a dominant force in the law reform movement in Canada. The author believes that an analysis of the reports published by these agencies, and the provincial legislation enacted in response to them discloses, however, that to a large extent the imporovements in provincial law that have been gained have come at the expense of uniformity of law among the provinces. This erosion of uniformity under the impact of the benign efforts of the provincial law reform agencies is the subject of this article. Several questions are addressed. Is this trend in the direction of diversity harmful? Why has the work of the agencies generated diversity rather than uniformity? What can be done to reverse the movement?