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Help

How to...

1. find the transcript of a debate in the House.
2. find the transcript of a Legislative Committee meeting.
3. find specific words in a transcript.
4. find what has been said about a topic in House debates.
5. find what has been said about a topic in Legislative Committee meetings.
6. find what an MLA has said.
7. use the Hansard Index.
8. How to find out how an MLA voted on an item of business.

1. How to find the transcript of a debate in the House:

• Go to the Debates of the Legislative Assembly page, which covers the current session, or link to the list for another year from the Previous Sessions page.
• Choose the link for the appropriate sitting: morning or afternoon, and debate in the House or in an estimates committee (e.g., Committee A).
• Note: although estimates debates are often conducted in a committee room, they are part of the regular legislative sitting. The draft Blues transcripts are separate, but the final transcript for a day's sitting includes any estimates committee meetings held on that day.

2. How to find the transcript of a Legislative Committee meeting:

• Go to the Committees page.
• Click on the name of the committee you are interested in (e.g., Public Accounts). 
• A list of Transcripts of that committee will appear. Click on the date of the meeting whose transcript you want to see. 

3. How to find specific words in a transcript:

• With the transcript open, press the key combination Ctrl+F to activate your browser program's "Find" function.
• A search box will appear. Use it to search for keywords you want to find: a member's name, the name of a company, or a word or phrase — or part of one — that might have been used in speaking about the subject you are interested in.

4. How to find what has been said about a topic in House or estimates debates:

• Use the search box at the top of any Hansard page, or link to the Hansard Search page. Search from there for specific words or phrases, or use the Hansard Index (see point 7 below).
• On the Hansard Search page, enter specific keywords for your search in the search box. Two words together make a phrase (e.g., "British Columbia"); if the words you are looking for won't necessarily occur in a phrase, separate them with "and" (without quotation marks).
• Additional help on entering keywords can be found on the Search Help page.
• Select the area(s) to search — the current session, a previous session or all sessions; debate transcripts or Index.
• Click the "Search for Documents" button.
• You will be presented with a list of documents that contain the search terms you entered.
• For each document in the list, there are two links. The first link takes you to the formatted document; you can find your search terms in the document by using a Ctrl+F search (see method 3 above). The second link is to an unformatted version of the document, which has clickable links within it that take you directly to your search terms.

5. How to find what has been said about a topic in Legislative Committee meetings.

• Go to the Committees page and use the search box or Committees Search there.
• Search as in point 4 above.

6. How to find what an MLA has said.

• Search for his or her last name using the search box on any Hansard page or the Hansard Search page. From the Hansard Search page you can search committee transcripts as well. You may add keywords if you are looking for what an MLA has said on a particular topic.
• Or use the Hansard Index (see below).

7. How to use the Hansard Index

• You may either consult the Index directly or search it using the Hansard Search page.
• To consult the Index directly, go to the Hansard Index page and select the appropriate index: (1) the skeleton index of a session in progress, (2) the interim index of the current session or (3) the completed index for a previous session.
• Click on the first letter of the topic or of the name you are interested in.
• Scroll down until you find the name or topic you are interested in, or use your browser's search function, as in point 3 above.
• Clicking on the page number beside a topic or name will take you to the appropriate page in the appropriate Hansard transcript.

8. How to find what an MLA has said.

• Link to Recorded divisions, or standing votes, from the Index home page. A listing called Voting Records by Member is available from the 4th Session, 36th Parliament (2000), onward. Click on the figure 1 preceding the alphabet for links to the corresponding Hansard transcript to view the entire recorded vote in context.