摘要 : Legislatures, those bodies of elected officials, are increasingly attuned to the rhetoric of open data for legislative content like bills and Hansards. This rhetoric dictates that government content should be freely accessible, re... 展开 Legislatures, those bodies of elected officials, are increasingly attuned to the rhetoric of open data for legislative content like bills and Hansards. This rhetoric dictates that government content should be freely accessible, repurposable, machine-readable, standardized across subregions, and available without licensing restrictions. Canada offers an excellent example of renewed emphasis on openness across jurisdictions. The call for legislative openness also derives from open data advocates, who seek to apply the rules of open data to unstructured information. We do not know whether legislative openness in Canada, at the provincial and territorial level, matches the rhetoric of open data. This study focused on commonly occurring categories of information on subnational legislative websites, and examined their copyright, availability, archivability, information timeliness, and plain language descriptions. Legislatures were contacted about current practices in the form of a web survey with follow-up phone interviews. We collected additional information via a web content analysis. Results indicated that a considerable amount of information was available, although generally at minimal levels of compliance and with significant variance across legislatures. Respondents expressed confusion about the extent of actual versus perceived openness of their information. We hope these findings provoke a subnational dialogue on legislative openness across Canada. 收起