If
you
ever
suspected
Canadian
politicians
flip-flopped
on
a
specific
issue,
or
wondered
where
they
stand
on
another,
a
new
online
tool
will
help
you
easily
find
out
for
sure.
WebArchives.ca
pulls
from
collections
that
the
University
of
Toronto
Library
has
been
collecting
for
a
decade.
Professor
Milligan
and
his
research
team
at
Waterloo,
as
well
as
project
collaborators
from
York
University
and
Western
University
made
the
data
searchable
and
accessible,
drawing
on
code
that
staff
at
the
British
Library
developed.
“We’ve
got
access
to
a
collection
of
50
archived
websites
from
political
parties
and
interest
groups,
allowing
you
to
search
them
back
to
2005,”
said
Milligan,
a
professor
in
the
Department
of
History
at
Waterloo.
It means, for example, that anyone can find out what parties and groups said about climate change or free trade in the 2008 or 2011 election, or at any point between elections.”
A
search
comparing
depression
against
recession,
for
example,
shows
parties
and
groups
such
as
the
Canadian
Centre
for
Policy
Alternatives,
the
Green
Party
and
the
Council
of
Canadians
tended
to
describe
economic
downturn
as
depression,
whereas
the
New
Democrats,
the
Liberals
and
the
Conservatives
more
typically
use
the
term
recession.
"We
can
use
these
searches
to
quickly
find
the
historical
allegories
that
some
made
towards
the
Great
Depression,
and
economic
action
plans
to
remedy
the
situation,”
said
Professor
Milligan.
Users
can
quickly
access
previously
public
content
that
is
now
stored
as
big
data
in
a
digital
archive.
The
website’s
search
tool
produces
millions
of
historical
results
that
wouldn't
turn
up
in
a
Google
search
because
the
pages
are
no
longer
live.
It
also
provides
sophisticated
analysis
functions.
“You
can
run
keyword
searches,
such
as
finding
out
the
context
of
a
word
—
Alberta
and
oil
for
instance
—
as
well
as
being
able
to
trace
the
prevalence
of
cultural
ideas
over
time,”
said
Milligan.
The
tool
can
trace
how
often
a
term
or
phrase
appears
in
each
year
of
the
collection’s
10-year
range.
It
contains
interactive
graphs
where
users
can
click
on
any
point
in
a
graph
line
to
open
all
the
citations
associated
with
a
specific
term
at
a
specific
date.
In
order
to
compare
and
analyze
shifting
rhetoric
and
platform
points,
users
can
compare
what
one
party
has
said
over
the
past
few
years
about
topics
ranging
from
global
warming
to
public
transit.
The
tool
also
tracks
the
change
in
language,
such
as
tar
sands
becoming
Canada’s
Oil
Sands.
The
project
is
possible
through
funding
from
the
Social
Sciences
and
Humanities
Research
Council
of
Canada
(SSHRC)
Insight
Development
Grant
and
an
Ontario
Ministry
of
Research
and
Innovation’s
Early
Researcher
Award.
Story originally published in a University of Waterloo media release.
Read the August 27 CBC online story.