The primary objective of the Library of Parliament’s Research Publications program blog, known as Notes de la Colline in French and HillNotes in English, is to provide research analysis and a collection of authoritative documents, on current events of significant interest to Parliament and emerging issues that will be significant to Parliament in the future.

Content

The Library of Parliament’s blog acts as a complement to its research publications program and its media monitoring products. Though it chiefly targets parliamentarians and Parliament Hill employees, it is also available to the general public.

The blog is administered by the Research Publications and Visualization (RPV) section of the Parliamentary Information, Education and Research Service (PIERS).

Subscription

Users can subscribe to the blog’s RSS feed on the Library of Parliament Research Publications page. Parliamentary staff may also subscribe to electronic updates.

Data Visualization and Maps

The Library of Parliament provides cartographic representations (maps) for the purposes of visualizing information; they are not intended to serve as legal or cadastral representations of geographic areas.

Comments and responses

The Library encourages comments and feedback on its blog. Moderators see all submitted comments and approve their content before they appear online.

The Library will only answer individual comments and questions when it deems it necessary. Questions of a specific nature and requests originating from parliamentarians or Parliament employees will be transferred to our client request management system for follow-up.

Administrators, while taking care not to censor users’ views, do reserve the right to edit, refuse or remove any of the following:

• comments contrary to the principles of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms
• racist, hateful, sexist, homophobic, slanderous, insulting, or life-threatening messages
• serious, unproven, unsupported, or inaccurate accusations against individuals or organizations
• abusive, aggressive, coarse, explicit, vulgar, violent, obscene, or pornographic comments
• comments that encourage or suggest illegal activity
• messages where the sender is not the author (nor the copyright holder, if applicable), and/or posted anonymously or by robot accounts
• announcements, solicitations, advertisements, or endorsements of any financial, political, labour, commercial or non-governmental organizations and agencies
• attempts to defame or defraud any individual, group or agency
• announcements from labour or political organizations
• messages written in a language other than English or French
• repetitive posts copied and pasted by multiple users
• unintelligible or irrelevant messages
• message of a highly political or partisan nature

Excerpted from: Canada.ca, Commenting policy.

Blog posts will be closed to comments 30 days after they are published.

The views expressed by participants do not necessarily represent those of the blog or the Library.

As a best practice, users are advised not to share personal information, such as home addresses and telephone numbers, photographs containing images of identifiable individuals or any other information consisting of personal information as defined in section 3 of the Privacy Act.

Should you have any questions about the comments policy or its enforcement, please contact the Library.

Links

For copyright-related reasons, certain resources are only available on the Parliament Hill network and are not accessible to the general public.

Frequency of posts

Post frequency varies widely, according to the parliamentary calendar. During certain periods, posts may be more or less frequent than usual. The Library is not committed to publishing a predetermined number of posts on its blog.

Availability

While the Senate and the House of Commons are sitting, site administrators will update and monitor the blog during business hours – 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. (ET), Monday to Friday. Other times, the blog will be updated and monitored during business hours, Monday to Thursday only. Comments submitted outside of those hours will be read and published as soon as possible the next working day.

Official languages

All of the content on the blog is available in both official languages. You can change the language by clicking the button to that effect on any page. The Library complies with the Official Languages Act and is committed to publishing blog posts of equal quality in both official languages simultaneously.

Links towards Library publications or products are displayed in the language of the user’s account. However, certain external resources may be available in only one of the official languages.

Responses to comments and questions requiring follow-up are written in the language of the original message.

Copyright

Information published on the blog is subject to the Copyright Act of Canada.

Accessibility

The Library will make all necessary efforts to make sure the blog’s content complies with accessibility standards. Anyone encountering difficulty accessing the information on our blog should contact the Library of Parliament so that the information can be provided in another format.

Confidentiality

The Library respects users’ personal information. Information that is shared on the blog is used only for the purpose for which it was provided and is kept in accordance with established information management practices. Information provided may also be used for security or other internal purposes.

Contact us

Should you have any request for general or technical information, or any question about the terms of use or the blog’s administration, please contact the Library of Parliament.