Coverage
Five desks, five paper trails
The Herald covers the places where a federal decision is written down and then administered. This page is the desk’s map: what each desk reads, what it publishes, and where the record can be found by a reader who wants to check the work.
343 seats · House of Commons
105 seats · Senate
13 provinces and territories
The standing desks
What lands on the desk, and where it sits
Updated each edition
01
Parliament and procedure
LEGISinfo · Order Paper · Hansard · committee evidence
Bills, estimates, committee work and the procedural decisions that set what the House can do. The desk treats procedure as substance: a closure motion, a time allocation, a Speaker’s ruling, or a committee’s decision to meet in camera changes what the public can see, and therefore what can be reported. We read the bill as amended rather than the version introduced, and we distinguish a first reading from a vote that commits the House.
02
Provinces and transfers
Finance Canada tables · provincial budgets · first ministers’ meetings
Federal transfers, fiscal arrangements, shared-cost agreements and the intergovernmental files that move money without a federal vote. The Canada Health Transfer, the Canada Social Transfer, equalization and Territorial Formula Financing each have their own formula, their own renewal cycle and their own conditions. The desk keeps the transfer tables current so that a provincial budget claim can be tested against the federal numbers in the same afternoon.
03
Courts and tribunals
CanLII · Supreme Court dockets · Federal Court · tribunal reasons
Reasons for judgment, leave applications, judicial reviews, sentencing data and the administrative decisions that never receive a press release. The desk distinguishes an order from an opinion, a stay from a ruling on the merits, and a tribunal’s finding of fact from its interpretation of its home statute. Where a case is proceeding, the filing reports the procedural posture before the argument.
04
Economy and households
Statistics Canada tables · Bank of Canada · Department of Finance
Prices, employment, wages, housing starts, fiscal updates and the revisions that change a story a month after it is published. Every figure is rebuilt from the issuing table, and the reference period is stated. The desk reports the consumer price index as an index with weights, not as a single headline rate, because the difference between the two is where most household arguments begin.
05
Immigration and the Arctic
IRCC notices · IRB decisions · Global Affairs · northern agreements
Levels plans, permit policy, refugee determinations, and the northern and Arctic files where federal jurisdiction, territorial authority and Indigenous rights meet. The desk reads the levels plan as a planning document with a parliamentary tabling date, and it treats Arctic waters, fisheries and infrastructure as administrative questions with a legal framework before it treats them as symbols.
What is not covered
The deliberate gaps
The Herald does not cover daily Question Period exchanges as news, party leadership races, or the mood of the gallery. It does not publish polls unless a filing is about the polling method itself. It does not report on a criminal investigation before a charging document exists, and it does not identify private individuals who have not entered public life.
Municipal affairs are covered only where a federal or provincial instrument is the operative decision: a housing agreement, a transit funding schedule, an infrastructure transfer. Provincial politics is covered through the fiscal and jurisdictional relationship with Ottawa, not through the legislature’s question period.
These gaps are not neutrality. They are a division of labour. A reader who wants the full national picture should read several publications; the Herald intends to be the one that shows the clause.