OpenParliament.ca

Lovers of politics and lovers of data may have found their nirvana in this handy website.

OpenParliament.ca is a volunteer effort of Michael Mulley, who created it because he thinks "Parliament's goings-on are important and because [he believes] that public information should be meaningfully public, which today means shareable and computer-readable."  Here here.

The site lets you track public debates, see how your MP voted (info on former MPs is available too, dating from 1994)or follow the voting record on particular bills.  Mulley sources include the transcripts from the Hansard and the data from HowTheyVote.ca.  He suggests ways to get involved (if I had a speck of programming knowledge, I would!) and has some sensible suggestions to make this kind of information just a little bit easier to gather and use.

I'm in the middle of a little piece of research to add to the discussion on the representativeness of our public debates, based on the Hansard word-search function.  I will post it here when it's complete.

Congratulations and thanks to Michael for this excellent undertaking.