New Brunswick First Reading Bills

In modern law, the first reading bills of a legislative body are valuable not only for historical research, but also for current reference by legislators, scholars, policy-makers, the media, and students. Presently, there are no online versions of pre-1997 New Brunswick bills and there is no guarantee that the existing digital versions of recent (1997- ) bills will remain online on the New Brunswick government's website in perpetuity.  Paper versions of NB first reading bills are scattered across Fredericton, with some years available within our library, some at UNB's Harriet Irving Library, some at the New Brunswick Legislative Library, and yet others at the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick.  Most of these paper collections are not easily accessible to users. 

Because of the importance of these bills as historical and reference documents, we have scanned them, starting immediately prior to the 3rd Session of the 53rd Legislature (1997-98 Legislative Session) which is the earliest set of first reading bills presented on the Government of New Brunswick's website. Our purpose is to so make these bills available to UNB faculty and students, scholars and legislators in New Brunswick and beyond, and the general public, and our intent is to continue to scanning them backwards in time as far as our resources allow.

We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of the NB Legislative Library and its Librarian, Kenda Clark-Gorey, in lending some of that library's bills to“fill in the gaps” as scanning proceeded.  We also thank Matt Hiltz, former UNB law student, for his work in organizing, scanning and creating the file structure for the bills and designing this introductory page.