I've finished listening through the committee hearings.
It was definitely interesting, and I have notes of several things I want
to do posts on, but particularly interesting was the clause-by-clause
review. Some of the legal experts from the Department of Justice were
there to answer any questions the committee members may have, as each
clause and the proposed amendments were discussed. Some of the nuances
of the law that I wasn't aware of, became clearer.
Another
thing I discovered: openparliament has trasnscripts of the committee
hearings, not just the business in the house! Which means if you want to
know what a particular person said (either witness or government
member) you can easily find it. And I won't have to find and transcribe
the bits I want to use in blog posts! :) the link is here: https://openparliament.ca/committees/public-safety/ and up in the useful links section.
I'm
going to do a post about OpenParliament, after this is all done. I thought
at first that they were a government-run site, part of the "open data"
movement I know governments are trying now. But, no - that site, which
is incredibly useful if you want to track what our elected representatives are saying and doing, was the result of one volunteer programmer's efforts. (I'm sure he would say he had help, but for now I'm going to give him a lot of credit.)
Makes me think that maybe I should head up an opennewbrunswicklegislature.ca website someday when I get time...
