FedMCP - Canadian Government Accountability Platform

A comprehensive MCP (Model Context Protocol) server providing deep access to Canadian federal parliamentary, legal, and accountability data through Claude and other LLM applications.

42 tools | 8 data sources | Full government accountability | Advanced analytics

🎯 What is FedMCP?

FedMCP is a research and transparency platform that gives you unprecedented access to Canadian government data:

• Track who is lobbying government and on what issues

• Monitor MP expenses and spending patterns

• Follow citizen petitions and government responses

• Search parliamentary debates and voting records

• Analyze legislative progress and bill sponsorship

• Browse Canadian case law and legal precedents

• Detect conflicts of interest through cross-source analysis

• Compare MP performance across multiple accountability metrics

Perfect for journalists, researchers, activists, and engaged citizens.

📊 Data Sources (8 Total)

1. OpenParliament API - Debates, votes, MPs, bills, committees

2. House of Commons Hansard - Official parliamentary transcripts

3. LEGISinfo - Legislative tracking and bill details

4. CanLII API - Canadian case law and legislation (requires free API key)

5. Represent API - Postal code to MP lookup

6. MP Expenditures - Quarterly proactive disclosure data

7. House Petitions - Citizen petitions and government responses

8. Lobbying Registry - Federal lobbying registrations and communications (100,000+ records)

🚀 Quick Start

Installation

Configuration

For CanLII access, obtain a free API key:

1. Request key from https://www.canlii.org/en/feedback/feedback.html

2. Add to environment:

Claude Desktop Setup

Add to your configuration file:

macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json

Restart Claude Desktop and the FedMCP tools will appear in your MCP tools menu.

🔧 Available Tools (42 Total)

Parliamentary Data (17 tools)

• search_debates - Search House debates by keyword

• list_debates - List recent debates with temporal filtering

• search_bills - Search bills by number or keywords

• get_bill - Get specific bill details from LEGISinfo

• list_bills - List bills with filtering options

• get_bill_votes - Get all votes on a specific bill

• list_mps - List Members of Parliament with filters

• search_politician - Search for MPs and Senators by name

• get_politician_voting_history - Get complete voting records

• list_votes - List parliamentary votes with filtering

• get_vote_details - Get detailed vote info with individual ballots

• list_committees - List parliamentary committees

• get_committee_details - Get committee meetings and members

• find_mp_by_postal_code - Find your MP by postal code

• search_hansard - Search Hansard transcripts for quotes

• get_hansard_sitting - Get complete sitting transcript

• search_topic_across_sources - Search across bills, debates, votes, Hansard

MP Accountability (11 tools)

• get_mp_expenses - Get MP quarterly expenditure data

• search_mp_expenses - Search expenses by name/party/constituency

• get_top_mp_spenders - Rank MPs by spending category

• get_party_spending_averages - Compare party spending patterns

• get_mp_activity_scorecard - Comprehensive MP performance metrics

• analyze_mp_bills - Analyze MP legislative record and success rate

• compare_mp_performance - Side-by-side comparison of 2-5 MPs

• analyze_mp_voting_participation - Voting attendance and patterns

• analyze_party_discipline - Find MPs who voted against party line

• get_bill_legislative_progress - Track bill journey through Parliament

• detect_conflicts_of_interest - Cross-reference expenses, lobbying, voting

Petitions (2 tools)

• search_petitions - Search citizen petitions by keyword/sponsor

• get_petition_details - Get petition with government response

Lobbying & Influence (5 tools)

• search_lobbying_registrations - Search active lobbying registrations

• search_lobbying_communications - Find reported lobbying meetings

• get_top_lobbying_clients - Rank organizations by lobbying activity

• analyze_bill_lobbying - See who's lobbying on specific bills

• analyze_industry_influence - Industry-wide lobbying analysis

Analytics (1 tool)

• track_committee_activity - Analyze committee productivity and focus

Legal Data (5 tools - requires CanLII API key)

• search_cases - Search case law by database and keywords

• get_case - Get case metadata

• get_case_citations - Get citing/cited cases and legislation

• search_legislation - Browse federal and provincial legislation

• list_legal_databases - List available court/tribunal databases

💡 Use Case Examples

🔍 Investigating Corporate Influence

Scenario: You want to know who's lobbying on Bill C-11 (Online Streaming Act)

📊 MP Performance Analysis

Scenario: Comparing your MP to others in the same party

🗳️ Tracking Citizen Engagement

Scenario: Following petition activity on climate change

💰 Expense Monitoring

Scenario: Analyzing MP spending patterns

🏛️ Legislative Research

Scenario: Understanding a bill's journey through Parliament

⚖️ Legal Research

Scenario: Finding case law on Charter rights

🔴 Corruption Detection

Scenario: Identifying unusual patterns

🏗️ Architecture

Client Structure

All clients follow consistent patterns with built-in rate limiting and retry logic:

• OpenParliamentClient (clients/openparliament.py) - Pagination-aware API client with automatic next-page fetching

• OurCommonsHansardClient (clients/ourcommons.py) - XML parser for Hansard transcripts with UTF-8 BOM handling

• LegisInfoClient (clients/legisinfo.py) - Access to LEGISinfo bill and legislation data

• CanLIIClient (clients/canlii.py) - REST API with 2 req/sec rate limiting (0.5s minimum interval)

• RepresentClient (clients/represent.py) - Postal code lookup via Open North API

• MPExpenditureClient (clients/expenditure.py) - House of Commons proactive disclosure data

• PetitionsClient (clients/petitions.py) - XML API for petition data with client-side filtering

• LobbyingRegistryClient (clients/lobbying.py) - Downloads and caches federal lobbying data (~90MB)

Rate Limiting

All HTTP clients use RateLimitedSession with:

• Proactive rate limiting: Configurable minimum interval between requests

• Reactive retry logic: Exponential backoff for 429/5xx errors

• Automatic retries: Up to 5 attempts with increasing delays

Caching Strategy

Lobbying Registry:

• Downloads 100,000+ records (~90MB compressed) on first use

• Cached at ~/.cache/fedmcp/lobbying/

• Optional auto-update after 7 days

• Instant loading on subsequent uses

📈 Recent Enhancements

Phase 8: Advanced Analytics (November 2025) 🆕

• ✅ Industry Influence Analysis - Track corporate lobbying across entire industries

• ✅ MP Performance Comparison - Side-by-side metrics for 2-5 MPs

• ✅ Cross-source accountability engine with 42 total tools

Phase 7: Multi-Source Correlation (November 2025) 🆕

• ✅ MP Activity Scorecard - Comprehensive metrics from 6+ data sources

• ✅ Committee Activity Tracking - Productivity and focus analysis

• ✅ Conflict of Interest Detection - Cross-reference expenses, lobbying, voting

Phase 6: Bill Analysis (November 2025)

• ✅ MP Bill Analysis - Legislative record and success rates

• ✅ Party Bill Comparison - Compare party legislative effectiveness

• ✅ Bill Progress Tracking - Detailed timeline through Parliament

Phase 5: Lobbying Registry (November 2025)

• ✅ Lobbying Search - 100,000+ registrations, 350,000+ communications

• ✅ Top Clients Analysis - Rank organizations by lobbying activity

• ✅ Bill Lobbying Analysis - See who's lobbying on specific bills

• ✅ Latin-1 encoding support for Canadian government CSV data

Phase 4: Petitions System (November 2025)

• ✅ Petition Search - 341+ active petitions with keyword search

• ✅ Government Response Tracking - Full petition text and official responses

• ✅ Client-side filtering for comprehensive search

Phase 3: MP Expenditures (November 2025)

• ✅ Quarterly Expense Data - Salaries, travel, hospitality, contracts

• ✅ Top Spenders Analysis - Rank MPs by spending category

• ✅ Party Spending Averages - Compare party spending patterns

Phase 2: Enhanced Parliamentary Tools (November 2025)

• ✅ Postal Code to MP Lookup - #1 most requested citizen feature

• ✅ Party Discipline Analysis - Identify MPs voting against party line

• ✅ Committee Data Access - List committees, get meeting details

• ✅ Temporal Filtering - Date ranges for votes and debates

Phase 1: Foundational Features (November 2025)

• ✅ Politician search by name

• ✅ Voting history and participation analysis

• ✅ Full Hansard sitting transcripts

• ✅ Enhanced debate/MP/vote listings

Total Growth: From initial 14 tools to 42 tools (+200%) with full government accountability coverage.

🎓 For Developers

Testing Client Usage

Running Tests

Adding New Tools

1. Define tool schema in list_tools() in server.py

2. Implement handler in call_tool() function

3. Return results as TextContent objects

4. Handle errors with try/except blocks

5. Update documentation in CLAUDE.md

⚠️ Important Notes

Data Freshness

• OpenParliament: Real-time API (updated continuously)

• Hansard: Published daily after sittings

• LEGISinfo: Updated as bills progress through Parliament

• MP Expenditures: Published quarterly (90 days after quarter end)

• Petitions: Real-time API

• Lobbying Registry: Updated monthly (cached locally for 7 days)

• CanLII: Updated daily with new case law

Rate Limits

• OpenParliament: 10 req/sec (conservative, API allows more)

• CanLII: 2 req/sec, 5,000 queries/day (enforced by API key)

• All others: No rate limiting required (static data or tolerant APIs)

Data Limitations & Caveats

MP Expenditure Data:

• Historical Limit: Data only available from July 2020 (FY 2020-2021 Q2) onward

• Missing Quarter: FY 2020-2021 Q1 (Apr-Jun 2020) returns server errors - not available

• Pre-2020 Data: Not available through current proactive disclosure system (likely different format/archived)

• Total Coverage: ~4.5 years of expense data vs. 20+ year MP careers

Travel Expense Reporting Nuances:

• Party leader travel may be funded through:

  • Party budgets (not individual MP office budgets)

  • Research office allocations

  • Parliamentary precinct allowances

• MPs with ridings near Ottawa (e.g., Carleton, Ottawa-area) naturally have lower travel expenses

• COVID-19 pandemic (2020-2021) significantly reduced all travel expenses

• $0 travel expenses do NOT necessarily indicate no travel occurred - check expense category definitions

Lobbying Registry:

• First-time data download takes ~30 seconds (~90MB)

• Subsequent loads are instant (cached locally)

• Data updated monthly by Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying

Privacy & Ethics

• All data is publicly available government information

• Designed for transparency and accountability, not harassment

• Use responsibly for research, journalism, and civic engagement

• Respect MP privacy for non-parliamentary activities

• Expense data represents office spending, not personal wealth or income

☁️ Deploying to Google Cloud

Want to move your Neo4j database to production on GCP? We've created a complete migration guide with automated scripts.

See: GCP_MIGRATION_QUICKSTART.md

What you get:

• Automated migration scripts (8 steps, ~1 hour)

• Production-ready VM configuration (n2-standard-2, 8GB RAM)

• Daily automated backups to Google Cloud Storage

• Firewall rules and security best practices

• Cost: ~$50-65/month

• Full rollback capability

All scripts are in scripts/gcp-migration/ - ready to run!

📝 License

MIT License - see LICENSE file for details

🙏 Credits

• Based on canfedinfo library from broadcast-os project

• Uses Open North's Represent API for postal code lookup

• CanLII data courtesy of Canadian Legal Information Institute

• OpenParliament data from openparliament.ca

• Parliamentary data from House of Commons and Senate

🤝 Contributing

Contributions welcome! Please:

1. Fork the repository

2. Create a feature branch

3. Add tests for new functionality

4. Update documentation (CLAUDE.md and README.md)

5. Submit a pull request

📧 Support

For bugs or feature requests, open an issue on GitHub.

For CanLII API key issues, contact https://www.canlii.org/en/feedback/feedback.html

Built with ❤️ for Canadian democracy and government transparency