Presentation and Warning

The Canada-US Treaties Internet Publication Project

During the Spring of 1998, the United-States' Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Canada, Lloyd Axworthy, agreed to supply the complete collection of bilateral Canada-US treaties so that they can be accessible on the Internet. The execution of this agreement was accomplished jointly by the Library of International Relations, the Chicago-Kent College of Law, the Illinois Institute of Technology, and the LexUM team of the Univesity of Montreal Faculty of Law's Public Law Research Center (LexUM).

The initial idea for the project came from Mickie Voges, the director of the Library of International Relations (LIR). In fact, her initial efforts to increase the already rich collections of the LIR inspired the project announced by Mrs. Albright and Mr. Axworthy in the Spring of 1998.

First of all, Mickie convinced the Canadian consul in Chicago. From that point on, due to the dynamism of the consul Grant, many members of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (FADIT) invested energy and time in order to realize the project.

The original documents were selected and supplied by the DFAIT. The Internet team of the department also contributed to the Web site design. For its part, the LexUM Team of the University of Montreal took charge of its own financial resources, of the creation of the Web site as well as the treatment of documents: numerisation, character recognition, verification and conversion in the formats necessary for their publication. Frédéric Pelletier did the essential part of this preparation and edition work. He spent two summers in order to accomplish this task.

The site of the Canada-US treaties published by LexUM constitutes the Canadian half of a pair where the other element is situated at the LIR. In due time, both halves will be linked in order for you to find on the LexUM site links to the image of the original document from Chicago. Also, the users of the site at LIR in Chicago will find links to the full text files prepared in Montreal.

Warning

Consulting the Collection

[Text to come]

Conditions of use

LexUM publishes on this Internet site the integral texts of original documents selected and supplied by the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. However, Please note that the texts offered on this site have been prepared uniquely for the readers' commodity and they do not have any official value. Despite the considerable care that was given for the conception of this site, LexUM and its partners decline any responsibility concerning the exactitude or reliability of the information herein included. For means of interpretation and application, the reader should verify the contents of the treaties from their official source that you can find in many paper-copy series (see description of the collection).

Any re-use of the documents offered on this site is submitted to the other conditions of use determined by LexUM.

LexUM's Editorial Choices

LexUM is concerned by the preservation of the legal content of texts published on this site as well as making it a reliable legal resource. However, essentially for practical reasons, the Canada-US treaties texts have been standardized, that means that the editorial add-ons, the typesetting and page setup of the official documents have not been integrally conserved. This choice results of the principle that it is not always possible or appropriate to reproduce on the Web the visual aspect of official paper copy sources. In fact, the full text digitization of documents as well as the marking-out of the information bring an increased value to the use of this information but needs on the other hand a visual presentation uniformity.

Thus, here is a brief description of the main elements of divergence between original documents and those published on this site.

Cover Pages

These pages have been taken out of the published texts. Each treaty is published on this site with a new cover page created by LexUM and one better adapted to the specific needs of an electronic report user.

The meta-informations appearing on the original cover pages have been preserved in a distinct and corresponding database, thus facilitating the research. When needed, this information can be reproduced on the new cover page of each treaty published on this site. This information contains :

• the treaty's official reference;
• the treaty's official title;
• the place and expedition date of diplomatic notes;
• the signature's place and date;
• the coming into force date;
• the subject's category;
• the name of the editor, city and year of the edition.

Titles

Each treaty published on this site is identified by its official title but without the mention "between Canada and the United-Stated of America" that was taken out in order to lighten the titles of reports that are exclusively devoted to the Canada-US relations. However, the official non-modified title of the agreement or exchange of letters is always fully reproduced in the core of each published text in order to assure the integrity of the texts.

Some more important treaties usually have different official titles. The usual title has been added between parentheses at the end of the official title (e.g.: "Agreement concerning Automotive Products (Auto Pact)").

Table of Contents

The table of contents presented occasionally at the beginning of official printed documents has been taken out. Instead, during the publication, an automatically generated table reproduces the title of each party to the treaty. This table is integrated to the new cover page. Each title of the table enables the user to access to the corresponding texts by means of hypertext links.

Linguistic Versions

In the original documents, the bilingual treaties usually group the English and French versions in one document. These versions have now been separated in distinct documents for the publication on this site. Consequently, the references to the official pagination of many documents are not continuous. It is, however, the official pagination.

Page Setup and Original Typesetting of the Texts

The page setup and the original typesetting of printed versions have been largely modified.

Have been taken out :

• the numbering of different parts of a treaty, sometimes added by the original editor at the beginning of each part;
• the indications that figure in the headers and footers of each page :
• the year reminder or the treaty's reference (e.g.: "1815" or "1977 No. 7");
• the abridged title of the treaty (e. g.: "Lake of the Woods Treaty" or "Convention of Commerce");
• the series of numbers used by typographers that sometimes appear at the end of pages and that have no legal value (e.g.: "18794—10&#frac12;").

The text's justification has been aligned to the left. The indents on the right of the paragraphs have been reproduced only when these paragraphs are numbered.

The case of the titles and subtitles as well as the word "Article" have been brought back to lower-case.

The texts' pagination is presented at the top of each page.

Diplomatic Notes

The layout of diplomatic notes, which for the original documents can vary considerably throughout the years, has been normalized in order to facilitate the consultation. The text present in the heading of the first page of the diplomatic notes has been digitized but the logos or coat of arms that may be found there have not been conserved. The name of the recipient of a diplomatic note has, in this case, been brought back to the beginning of the mentioned note in order to avoid any ambiguities. It is clearly identified as such. The names of senders and recipients are systematically identified by the mentions [From :] and [To :]. Finally, the disposition and the punctuation of dates, expedition places and numbers of diplomatic notes have been uniformed.

Tables

The text contained in the tables is reproduced integrally but the constraints of the HTML language do not allow to faithfully reproduce the visual layout, particularly the cells' grid patterns. It is particularly also recommended to users to consult the printed versions or their digitized images.

Appendixes

In some original documents, the appendix of a diplomatic note is placed at the end of the exchange of notes even if it doesn't attach itself to the last note. In this case, we positioned the appendix following the note to which it is attached. The pagination of the appendix is however conform to the original.

Reference Data

A page generally placed at the end of the original document contains information such as : the copyright, the name and address of the publishers of the printed version, the ISBN number, etc. If need be, this information is part of the new cover page placed at the beginning of each treaty published on this site.