Orders in Council approved after July 1, 2016, are now available online, in an accessible and bilingual format.

Overview

An Order in Council (OIC) is a government order recommended by the Executive Council and signed by the Lieutenant Governor.

While they have a wide variety of uses, they’re most frequently used to:

  • set up agencies, boards or commissions
  • appoint people to agencies, boards or commissions and set their salaries
  • bring laws (or parts of laws) into effect
  • appoint provincial judges and certain senior public servants
  • create advisory bodies and appoint special advisors
  • assign legal responsibilities to government ministers

OICs can be new or they can amend or cancel previous OICs. They must be approved by the Executive Council (the Premier and Cabinet Ministers) and are not legal until they’re signed by the Lieutenant Governor.

How OICs are created

An OIC is drafted by Legal Counsel when a Minister or the Premier wants to recommend a certain action under an Act, or under the common law authority of the Crown often referred to as “Crown Prerogative”.

If an OIC appoints a person to a provincial agency or other entity, it’s generally processed by the Public Appointments Secretariat.

A non-appointment OIC is generally reviewed by:

  • Treasury Board/Management Board of Cabinet if the OIC affects the government’s budget or operations
  • Legislation and Regulation Committee of Cabinet for all other OICs

Once reviewed, the OIC is submitted to Cabinet for approval and then signed by the Lieutenant Governor, acting on the advice of Cabinet.

Search for an OIC

Before 2000

OICs created before 2000 are held by Archives of Ontario. You can request these OICs by:

2000 to Present

OICs created since 2000 are held by the Executive Council Office.

If you need a copy of an OIC from 2000 to June 30, 2016 send us an email and include the:

  • date
  • content/subject matter
  • related Act of the OIC you are requesting

If you need a copy of an OIC since July 1st, 2016, you can search for them online.
To search within an attachment or schedule, please use the general search bar at the top of the page.

Publishing timeframe

Once signed by the Lieutenant Governor, OICs will be available online within 10 business days.

This may change from time to time due to volume or exceptional circumstances.

Restricted OICs

In very rare cases, we may need to delay or not post an OIC. Some examples of when this may be necessary include when an OIC:

Unilingual OICs

Some OICs are only available in English because they may include:

  • legal descriptions which only exist in English
  • attachments or appendices drafted by third parties in English only

If an OIC can’t be translated, we’ll include a brief description in English or French for information purposes.

Contact us

If you have questions about the Order in Council webpage, send us an email.

If you have questions about the content of specific OICs, contact the specific government ministry.