The Historical Debates of the Parliament of Canada portal provides a centralized, streamlined means of accessing historical debates of the Senate and House of Commons, in both official languages.
The Senate and House of Commons Debates, commonly known as the Debates, or Hansard, contain the transcribed, edited and corrected record of full deliberations of both Houses of Parliament.
Since the adoption of official reporting (in 1871 for the Senate and 1880 for the House of Commons), the daily editions of the Hansard were issued in bound, well-indexed volumes. This site has been produced from digitized editions of these volumes, all available under their corresponding Parliament and Session, in the Browse function of this portal.
This portal includes reconstituted debates, which represent debates for the years prior to the adoption of official reporting. These reconstituted debates are an unofficial version of the debates, drawn from newspaper reports of the day. Finally, the portal also includes translated debates for the Senate of Canada, which began its official report in English only. All of the reconstituted and translated content can be identified in the records.
In 1994, the House began to distribute its publications electronically by making its publications accessible worldwide through the Parliament of Canada Web site. The Senate followed suit in 1996. To access debates from these dates and later, please visit parl.gc.ca, under Parliamentary Business.
