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51 lines
2.0 KiB
51 lines
2.0 KiB
---
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title: "Know How Your Representative Votes In Parliament"
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layout: post
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---
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As an advocate for openness, I had an idea to make a project out of the government of Canada's [Open Data](https://open.canada.ca/en/open-data)
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initiative to take a look at how my local MP voted on various pieces of legislation.
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It turns out though that this was not necessary due to how easy it was to find this information on the government's own website.
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In this article, I will explain how you can do the same.
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### 1. Find Your Representative
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The first step in this process is to find who your representative is.
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To do so, go to the government's own website
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[ourcommons.ca's search tool](https://www.ourcommons.ca/Members/en).
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Simply type in your postal code in the search box to find out who your MP is.
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### 2. Their Voting Record
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Every MP's voting record is public knowledge,
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and it is available nice and simple in a table on that MP's page.
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For example, this is a link to
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[Pierre Poilievre's voting record](https://www.ourcommons.ca/Members/en/pierre-poilievre(25524)/votes).
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To find your MP's voting record, do step one, then:
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After the **Overview**, and **Seat in The House** sections,
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there are three tabs, **Roles**, **Work**, and **Contact**.
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Click on work.
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At the bottom of that tab is a link which says **Chamber Votes**.
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This will open a small window with some recent votes by this politician.
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If you want to see all their votes, there is a button at the bottom named **All Votes by This Member**.
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Tada! You can now keep your local MP accountable for anything you do or do not support.
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### 3. Bill Details
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If you want to get into the nitty gritty,
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once you open a specific bill, you can actually find out the status of said bill,
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or read the actual text by clicking the **View this Bill on LEGISinfo** button.
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Both the status of the bill, and a link to a PDF document containing the bilingual text of the bill are visible in the main body of the page.
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#### Conclusion
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I thought this was pretty cool!
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It was *way* simpler than I thought it would be.
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Thanks, Canada!
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