A Question of Respect: A Qualitative Text Analysis of the Canadian Parliamentary Committee Hearings on The Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act

We evaluate the Canadian parliamentary hearings on The Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act to determine whether respectful and fair deliberation occurred. Our focus is on the content, tone, and nature of each question posed by committee members in hearings in both chambers. We find that, on the whole, the vast majority of questions met this baseline, but that committee members were biased toward witnesses in agreement with their position and against witnesses in opposition to it. In addition to our substantive findings, we contribute methodological insights, including a coding scheme, for this kind of qualitative text analysis.