Toronto-based tech startup Codify Legal Publishing has launched the Canadian Mining Feed, a database that tracks mining, natural gas and oil legislation across Canada. The database includes government legislation, bills, statutes and regulatory publications, and can be customized to deliver updates on specific legislative topics.
According to the company, the feed aims to help citizens better connect with the laws around them and help businesses make better decisions. “We live in this age of information, but unfortunately with law and governance there are a lot of inefficiencies in the way information is passed out,” John Wu, director of Codify Legal Publishing, told CIM Magazine. “With [mining-related] legislation we found out that a lot of this information was still being passed around manually, and that a lot of people were only finding out about this information through second-hand sources. Our goal is to make it as effortless as possible to get primary legislative information straight to you.”
The database automatically pulls information from federal, provincial and territorial government websites, collecting details about updates to bills, regulations and mining-related legislation. The Canadian Mining Feed’s scope also includes legislative changes and updates from the U.S. at both the state and federal levels, and from the U.K. and Australia at the federal level. The database updates twice a day to stay current with any developments in legislation.
“We've been in development for quite a while now,” said Wu. “In terms of the current mining project, we made it live a little over a month ago.”
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“One thing that we've done with this information, using the statute database from the Department of Justice, is that we've actually managed to link this information [together],” Wu said. “If you check out any bills you'll be able to see all the statutes that it amends. You can also find any statutes in Canada and then see all the bills that have amended those statutes.”
Wu explains that since legal information is traditionally published in different formats, such as websites or PDFs, it is often difficult to work with on a technological level. The feed, however, standardizes the collected data into a single, machine-readable format.
“Once [the data] is converted into this format, it's really easy to work with on a technological level and we can apply all sorts of different filters to it,” Wu said. “We've been able to manipulate this data at a way faster rate than what would otherwise be possible… our system is able to monitor the data consistently. Whenever there's a change we're pretty much able to detect it in almost real-time.”
Codify Legal is already working on expanding its database to include government regulations, in addition to bills, as part of its legislative coverage in the U.S., U.K. and Australia. As well, the startup plans to add a feature that would allow users to click on a bill and see the different regulations it would affect, similar to its existing statute feature.
“Hopefully our users will be able to use this information to help build a better society with a stronger economy and create more value,” Wu explained.
The Canadian Mining Feed can be found at: https://codifylegalpublishing.com/canadian-mining-feed/
