Canada bill tracker: how to follow a bill through Parliament

Read the bill number first

A Canadian bill number encodes where it started and who introduced it, and that tells you most of what you need before reading a word of the text.

• C- means the bill was introduced in the House of Commons. S- means it started in the Senate.
• Low numbers are government bills.Federally, C-1 through roughly C-200 are reserved for bills introduced by a minister. Numbers above that range are private members' bills, introduced by an individual MP, which pass far less often and move on a rationed schedule.
• Numbers reset every session. Bill C-5 in one session of Parliament has nothing to do with bill C-5 in the next. A bill number without a session is ambiguous, which is why every bill on this site carries its session alongside its number.
• Provinces number separately.An Ontario Bill 5 and a Nova Scotia Bill 5 are unrelated. We disambiguate by prefixing the jurisdiction in each bill's address.

The stages a bill moves through

The federal path is first reading, second reading, committee, report stage, third reading, then the same sequence in the other chamber, then royal assent. Provincial legislatures follow a similar Westminster sequence with one chamber instead of two.

Three things about stages regularly trip people up:

1. Second reading is the vote on principle, not on the final text. A member can vote for a bill at second reading and against it at third, and that is a coherent position rather than a reversal.
2. Committee is where the text changes. The version that passes is often not the version introduced, so a quotation from a first-reading text may describe something that no longer exists.
3. Royal assent is not always coming into force.An Act can receive assent and then come into force later, on a date fixed by order of the Governor in Council. A law can therefore be "passed" and not yet in effect.

For the full procedural walkthrough with the federal specifics, read How a Federal Bill Becomes Law.

A bill is not an Act

This is the single most common reason a search fails. A bill is a proposal in front of a legislature; an Act is the law that results, and it is then amended over the years by later bills. Tracking a bill tells you what a legislature is doing right now. Reading the current, consolidated law is a different task with different sources:

• Federal Acts in force are published on Justice Laws, consolidated with all amendments applied.
• Federal bills in progress are on LEGISinfo, with the text at each stage and the votes taken.
• Each province publishes its own consolidated statutes separately from its bills — see the Nova Scotia guide for a worked example of the distinction.

Using the tracker here

Our Legislation pages cover the federal Parliament and every provincial legislature we can collect from. Each bill carries its number and session, its sponsor and their party, its current stage, the topic we have classified it under, and — where the legislature publishes divisions — the recorded votes attached to it.

Two practical routes to an answer:

• You know the bill. Search its number in the legislation list, open it, and follow the sponsor link to see everything else that member has sponsored.
• You know the member. Open their profile from Members and read their sponsored bills alongside their voting record. What someone introduces and what they vote for are separate signals, and they do not always agree.

Coverage is not uniform: bill data is live for the federal Parliament and for every province except Prince Edward Island, whose legislature blocks automated access. Recorded divisions are far scarcer than bills. The current status of each feed is on Data coverage, and where we cannot collect something we say so rather than estimating it.

Why most bills go nowhere

A large share of introduced bills never become law, and that is normal rather than a failure. Private members' bills compete for a small amount of floor time; bills die when a session is prorogued or Parliament is dissolved; a government may introduce a bill to signal a position without intending to push it through. If a bill you are following stops moving, check whether the session ended — that explains most sudden silences.