Start Here
A guide to the three Hansard Files series and the best place to begin reading.
Hansard Files turns Canadian parliamentary and government records into narrative journalism. Three reported features run each week, on Tuesdays, Fridays, and Sundays. Every story is free to read and includes its sources.
THE WEEKLY RECORD
(Current House and Senate committee evidence and other active parliamentary records)
Meta's Own Files Put Scam Ads at Ten Percent. Meta Says Less.
A senior in Orillia, Ontario, put nearly a million dollars into an investment that did not exist. The pitch came with a familiar face attached to it, a trusted public figure moving and speaking in a short video. The face was fake. The money was real, and it was gone.
Canada Exports Cucumbers. It Imports Pickles. Senators Want to Know Why.
Darren Anderson was making a point that senators clearly weren’t expecting. The CEO of Vive Crop Protection had been invited to testify about agricultural technology, about the state of innovation in Canadian farming, about whether the country was keeping pace. What he offered instead was something closer to a warning.
THE PAPER TRAIL
(Current audits, regulations, departmental reports, and other government records)
The $663 Million Question: How Canada Funded Its Own Press, and Who Collected
Written in collaboration with Heidi Legg.
The Rule That Sent Fishers to Sea in Storms Is Being Scrapped
Federal fisheries regulations currently give a lobster or crab harvester on the Atlantic coast exactly 72 consecutive hours to check a string of traps before the law says the gear counts as abandoned. In Newfoundland and Labrador waters, the window is three days, not counting the day the gear went in. Miss it, and a harvester risks a $500 fine under the…
FROM THE FILES
(Canadian history told from the primary record)
I Read the Parliament of Canada Hansard for July 9, 1982, and the Bill Nobody Remembers Changed Everything
Parliament was nearly empty on the afternoon of Friday, July 9, 1982. Most MPs had already left Ottawa. The ones who stayed were watching the clock. At roughly 4:30 p.m., a private member’s bill called Bill C-201 came up on the order paper. It proposed one change to the Holidays Act: replace the words “Dominion Day” with “Canada Day.” Three words out, t…
The House of Alphonse: Canadian Secret Agents Who Led 307 Airmen Out of Occupied France
On the moonless night of January 29, 1944, sixteen Allied airmen and two British agents waited inside a small stone farmhouse near the village of Plouha. They had gathered after dark, moving in small groups to avoid notice. A radio in the farmhouse carried the BBC French Service. Right after the news broadcast, the set crackled with the agreed signal: B…
Notes capture shorter findings and exchanges from the record between the weekly features.
Every feature identifies the records behind the reporting and provides enough detail to locate the original sources.
Free: every story by email. The archive stays open.
Paid: fund the hours in the record so the work stays free for everyone.