API

The Hansards of the House, since 1994, are available in squeaky-clean machine-readable form. (They've been scraped, via a terrifying edge-case bonanza of code, from the decidedly less-than-squeaky-clean Parliament site.)

Our API is simple and HTTPy. To access them, start out at openparliament.ca/api/hansards/, which'll provide you with a list of available Hansards. The response is JSON by default, but a ?format=xml parameter'll switch that.

At the moment, only the full version of any given Hansard is available via the API, and this tends to be a big chunk of data, more suitable for one-time processing than on-the-fly access. Recent statements by a given politician are also available, as RSS feeds, via the main site.

I'm happy to make data available, and happier to see people build things on top of it. If there's data on this site that you'd like to use, let me know. I'd prefer to build APIs in response to demand than try to guess what people will want to use.

If you're looking for data on bills, politicians, and so on, it's definitely on my to-do list to expose that. You should also take a look at How'd They Vote. Also, if live updates are not important, you can download a copy of this site's database.

Proceedings of the House are republishable under Speaker's Permission.