Posted: April 10th, 2015

Newspaper reporting on Government Bills introduced and passed in the House of Commons

Newspaper reporting on Government Bills introduced and passed in the House of Commons

Order Description

The point of this exercise is to see how much of the legislation debated and passed in the House of Commons is discussed in the Globe and Mail.
Canadians will not be informed and capable of participating in democratic debates if the media does not tell them about what is taking place.
Go to the Parliament of Canada website. Find the list of Bills introduced by the Government in the Second Session of the 41st Parliament, (the current session and current parliament). (Hint: as of January 6, 2015 there were 50 Government Bills introduced during the session.) Make a list of the numbers of the bills (ie. C2, C3) and the short titles of the bills (i.e., Senate Reform Act) and the status of the Bill (the last or most recent stage completed in the path to Royal Assent). Keep track of this in a Word table. Once the list is compiled, access the Globe and Mail set the date for search to coincide with the dates for the Second Session of the 41st Parliament and search for any mention of the legislation using the bills number and or the short title of the bill. Report the number of pieces of legislation that had any mention on the Globe and Mail over this period. There may be good reasons why some Bills are not mentioned, perhaps they are routine matters. Is there one or more piece of legislation that you think should have been discussed in the paper but was not?
Describe your research process, where the information came from and how you selected it.
What do your findings tell us about how one newspaper reports on the workings of our democracy? If the paper wasn’t reporting on the business of Parliament how would you characterize the balance of their political reporting? How far can you generalize your findings? If you had unlimited time and money what would you do to broaden the study of this question and why?
• Explain why the question you are researching is important.
• Properly reference where the data came from in a manner that would allow a reader to find the exact same places should they choose to verify your figures. Do not use Wikipedia data or references or other secondary sources that do not seem authoritative or primary.
• Tell the reader what the data is telling you and why?
You can use the table below as a template.(example)
[Bill number][Short Title][Status][Date/dates of mention in Globe] [Comments]
C7 Senate Reform Act Introduction and First Reading