Preliminary Work
The archives include virtually the entire collection of documents amassed by each individual committee. Amongst these are minutes of committee meetings, various working papers drawn up by the committees, external documents consulted, draft reports, articles adopted by the committees and drafts leading up to them, and various other sorts of documents used during the committees' proceedings. In keeping with its policy of respecting the bilingual character of Quebec private law in its legislative form, the C.C.R.O. prepared reports in both French and English as a general rule. The reports in the archives were published, in principle, in a single bilingual format. Exceptionally, the final Report on the Québec Civil Code (1978) / Rapport sur le Code civil du Québec (1977) was published in separate English-language and French-language versions. As for the working papers of the C.C.R.O., these were prepared in French or in English, at the choice of the author or authors involved.
Each committee was to submit a report on its particular field to a supervisory committee of the C.C.R.O.. Before final reports were issued, preliminary versions were drawn up and circulated amongst interested groups and individuals. The comments received from those consulted form part of the archives.
Once a committee's final report (referred to in C.C.R.O. parlance as the "yellow report") had been prepared, it was submitted to the Coordination Committee of the C.C.R.O., which attempted to harmonize policy choices and vocabulary across the drafts of the various committees. The yellow reports were also circulated amongst interested groups and individuals, and their comments are also a part of the archives.
Following the coordination work, the C.C.R.O. often prepared and published a revised version of the committee's report (the "green report"). These were submitted to the appropriate legislative authorities, and were issued in the name of the C.C.R.O. (as opposed to the yellow reports, which were signed by the individual committees). Following several of these, the Minister of Justice issued a further revised report on the particular area of law in question which was deposited in the National Assembly in his name (the "blue report").
Upon the completion of its work in 1977, the C.C.R.O. submitted to the Minister the composite report, Report on the Québec Civil Code / Rapport sur le Code civil du Québec referred to above, which contained an entire draft civil code and commentaries on its provisions.
Preliminary Subject Reports
A full listing of preliminary subject reports available in the archives, as well as their relevant document codes, are available by consulting Appendix A of the Research Guide
Other documents
Other documents as described in the classification system can be found using the archive’s search engine.