MP voting records go online (TheStar)

[Drew Wilson]

OTTAWA–Want to know how your MP has been voting in the House of Commons? Finding out has just become a whole lot easier.

The House of Commons website has launched a feature that allows visitors to see how MPs voted.

Friday's change brings Canadian transparency one step closer to the U.S. – where Congress regularly posts voting results within an hour, and has detailed records going back 20 years.

Unlike the U.S., Canada's parliamentary system usually results in MPs toeing a party line, so votes in the Commons tend to be far less dramatic than in Congress.

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Let's face it, accountability hasn't been in the parliaments vocabulary for quite a while anyway.

I guess Doctorow is wanting someone to rebuild the website so it's legible. Nevertheless, a good start.

[1cooldude]

Transparency of Canadian politics has usually been mired in distortion and clouding of issues. With the current federal government, Access to Information has always been a tool to distort and hide the key information when public is in need to know.The federal government currently charges citizens various fees for access to data that was gathered by government institutions and funded by the public through taxes. Recent studies have shown that the benefits to the government of making this data freely accessible, in tax dollars, greatly outweigh the money recovered via access fees.