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Summary
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The Business Names Act (the BNA) requires individuals, partnerships and corporations who carry on business or identify themselves to the public under another name to register the name with the Companies Branch of the Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations (the Ministry). In order to register, these businesses must complete and file a "Form 1" with the Ministry. The statute also describes the responsibilities assigned to a Registrar for maintaining records filed under theBNA, and authorizes storage formats. The government has regulatory authority under the BNA which permits the charging of fees.
Until 1995, each Form 1 was filed in hard copy format, and the completed forms were stored on the business names registration microfilm (the microfilm). Since October 1995, registrants have also been permitted to file electronically. With the advent of electronic filing, the microfilm now contains only those forms which were filed in hard copy. The Ministry plans to discontinue storage on microfilm as soon as the electronic filing system is fully operational.
I have examined a sample of the microfilm provided by the Ministry. It contains the Form 1 registrations made over a number of days, organized by date of registration. Each Form 1 is completed by the registrant, and sets out the name and address of the business, the name, address, and signature of the registrant, and a short description of the nature of the business activity to be undertaken. Within a square marked "Ministry Use Only" there is a "BIN" number, a shortened version of the name, the registration date, and the expiration date, five years from the date of the registration. Each day's registrations are preceded by a page which indicates that the registrations for a particular date follow.
Until October 1995, Regulation 624/93 under the BNA set out a fee for purchasing the microfilm. It stated that registrations filed on a particular day and stored on microfilm were available at a fee of 40 cents per page of text, as long as the request for copies was made in advance, and no search was required for the documents. Concurrent with the enactment of the regulation permitting electronic filing, Regulation 624/93 was revoked.
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