Parliament and the Internet: The Present and the Future

Every member of the Senate and the House of Commons along with their staff have access to e-mail, the World-Wide Web and Usenet newsgroups. However, just getting connected to the internet does not ensure that this communications tool is used to the fullest extent. This article looks at what Parliamentarians are doing and what they could do in the future. In the early 1990s the Internet was just a mysterious entity that did not figure prominently in the work of most legislators. Today all federal and most provincial legislators have been connected to the Internet in one form or another yet the question still arises as to what extent this new technology is being used in the offices of Canadian legislators