Every Vote. Every Party. Every Time.

Parliament Audit tracks every recorded vote in Canada's House of Commons and Senate. Non-partisan. Factual. Transparent. Because Canada deserves to know.

Latest News

View all news →

LegislationJuly 6, 2026

When an MP's Seat Goes Empty, a Clock Starts — But It's a Long One. Here's How Byelections Actually Work.

A House of Commons seat becomes vacant when a member dies, resigns, or accepts an office that disqualifies them from sitting. The machinery that follows is set out in the Parliament of Canada Act and the Canada Elections Act: the Speaker addresses a warrant to the Chief Electoral Officer notifying them of the vacancy, and a writ for a byelection must then be issued between the 11th day and the 180th day after the Chief Electoral Officer receives that warrant. Inside that window, the timing belongs to the Governor in Council — in practice, the Prime Minister — and the campaign that follows must run at least 36 days before voting day. Add it up and a riding can lawfully go more than half a year without a voice in the House. If Parliament is dissolved for a general election before a byelection is held, the byelection writ is deemed withdrawn and the seat is simply filled at the general election. Byelection winners are full members of Parliament in every respect. What byelections signal is a murkier question: turnout is typically far below general-election levels, local candidates and local grievances loom large, and voters know they are not choosing a government — which makes byelections a real test of party organization and a genuine seat in the House, but an unreliable predictor of the next general election.

LegislationJuly 5, 2026

Any Canadian Can Make the Government Respond in Writing Within 45 Days. Here's How Petitions to Parliament Actually Work.

The right to petition Parliament predates Confederation, and it remains one of the few formal mechanisms by which any citizen or resident of Canada — no minimum age, no cost — can put an issue before the House of Commons and compel a written government answer. Two streams exist. Paper petitions follow the traditional route: a petition addressed to the House, in respectful language, asking Parliament or the government to act on something within federal jurisdiction, with at least 25 valid signatures, certified by the Clerk of Petitions and presented in the House by an MP. E-petitions, launched in December 2015 at petitions.ourcommons.ca, moved the process online: a petitioner drafts the text, gathers five supporters, and finds an MP willing to sponsor it; once published, the petition is open for signature for a set period, and if it collects at least 500 valid signatures it is certified and presented in the House. The key feature of both streams is the response rule in the Standing Orders: the government must table a response to every presented petition within 45 calendar days, and if it fails, the matter is referred to a committee. The honest limits: petitions do not trigger debates or votes, do not bind the government to act, and responses often restate existing policy. What they reliably do is put an issue — and the government's official position on it — on the permanent public record.

LegislationJuly 4, 2026

One Bill, Hundreds of Pages, Dozens of Laws, a Single Vote. Here's How Omnibus Bills Work — and the 2017 Rule That Lets the Speaker Split Them.

An omnibus bill is a single bill that seeks to amend, repeal, or enact several — often unrelated — measures at once, moving through every stage of Parliament as one package with one vote at each stage. Governments bundle for efficiency and for leverage: a package moves on one timetable, and MPs cannot support the parts they like while opposing the parts they don't. The most durable form is the budget implementation act — the twice-yearly bill that turns budget promises into law and routinely runs to hundreds of pages amending dozens of statutes. The 2012 budget bills (C-38 and C-45), each more than 400 pages and reaching deep into environmental assessment, fisheries, and navigable-waters law, made "omnibus" a household complaint. In June 2017 the House adopted Standing Order 69.1, which lets the Speaker divide the question at second and third reading where a bill has "no common element" connecting its parts — so MPs can vote separately on unrelated components. Two limits matter: the rule splits the votes, not the bill (it still goes to one committee as one bill), and it largely exempts budget implementation bills whose measures were announced in the budget — the very place the biggest bundles live. Every major party has criticized omnibus bills in opposition and used them in government; the durable question is not whether bundling happens, but how much scrutiny each measure inside the bundle actually gets.

Latest Votes

No votes published yet.

Check back soon — we're monitoring Parliament for new recorded divisions.

While you wait:

1. Learn about the project and why we built it
2. Read our methodology — how we collect and verify data
3. Find your MP and see who represents you
4. Subscribe for alerts so you never miss a vote

Stay Informed

Get notified when Parliament votes on the issues that matter to you.

Subscribe for Vote Alerts