The Legal Imperative: Must versus Shall – OKT

In normal conversation, if I tell you that you must do something, that would be understood as an imperative command.  However, lawyers have undergone years of intensive training to make us “think like lawyers” rather than like normal people.  Along this line, traditionally, in legal drafting, the convention has been to use the word “shall” to indicate an imperative.  For example, section 2(1) of the Income Tax Act reads “An income tax shall be paid, as required by this Act, on the taxable income for each taxation year of every person resident in Canada at any time in the year.”

This drafting convention has been enshrined in the federal Interpretation Act, which is one of the first stops a lawyer would make in dealing with a question of statutory interpretation.  Section 11 of that Act reads “The expression ‘shall’ is to be construed as imperative…”

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