# govanswers

> Municipal bylaws and policies across Canada and the United States,
> consolidated and verified. One page
> per (municipality x topic) answering the questions residents ask — quiet
> hours, dog licensing, burn permits, short-term rentals, zoning, AI use
> policies — with every fact traced to a captured copy of the official
> document. Verified negatives included: "this municipality has no AI policy
> as of <date>" is an answer, with the date it was checked.

Currently covering 3675 municipalities with 13644
verified bylaws and ordinances (Canadian municipalities adopt bylaws; US
municipalities adopt ordinances — same URL scheme, same topic slugs). Data is
produced by the GovIndex pipeline: discovered by search, verified against the
opened source document, re-checked periodically. Negative results are
first-class: a municipality page may state that no local laws are published
online, verified as of a given date.

Base URL: https://govanswers.org

## MCP server (recommended for AI agents)

A remote Model Context Protocol server exposes this data conversationally —
read-only, no API key, always in sync with the site:

  https://mcp.govanswers.org/mcp    (Streamable HTTP transport)

Tools:
- search_municipalities(query, province?) — resolve a name to its path
- list_topics() — the bylaw/policy topic slugs
- get_bylaw(path, topic) — verified facts, each with a citation to the
  official source document and an archived snapshot

In Claude: Settings -> Connectors -> Add custom connector -> paste the URL.
The same endpoint works for any MCP-capable client (OpenAI, etc.).

If you only browse the web, the plain JSON twins below need no client at all.
Full schema for them: https://govanswers.org/docs  ·  OpenAPI: https://govanswers.org/openapi.json

## URL scheme

Examples (region codes are two-letter postal abbreviations, e.g. ca/pe, ca/nl, us/ri):
- https://govanswers.org/ca/pe/stratford/noise/          (answer page, HTML)
- https://govanswers.org/ca/pe/stratford/noise.json      (same data, JSON)
- https://govanswers.org/us/ri/providence/noise.json     (US states use the same scheme)
- https://govanswers.org/ca/ns.json                      (region index: all covered municipalities + slugs)


- `/<country>/<region>/<municipality>/` (country: ca or us) — all topics for one municipality
- `/<country>/<region>/<municipality>/<topic>/` — the answer page (HTML)
- `/<country>/<region>/<municipality>/<topic>.json` — the same data, machine-readable
- `/topics/<topic>/` — one topic across every covered municipality
- `/<country>/<region>.json` — region index: every covered municipality + its topic coverage
- `/munis.json` — flat index of every municipality (name, jurisdiction, path)
- `/search.json` — flat index of every answer with a plain-English snippet; fetch and filter it (static host, so ?q= is not server-side)
- `/docs` — JSON twin field reference (human + agent readable)
- `/openapi.json` — OpenAPI 3.1 description of the read-only GET surface
- `/sitemap.xml` — every page with last-verified dates

Bylaw topics: noise, animal-control, short-term-rentals, open-burning, zoning, parking-snow, property-maintenance, atv-snowmobile, fireworks, water-sewer, garbage-recycling, business-licensing, cannabis, fees, property-tax
Policy topics: procurement, grants, facility-use, winter-services, hr-personnel, privacy-records, communications, emergency-management, finance-policy, technology, conduct-ethics, ai-policy

## Key pages

### Canada
- [Prince Edward Island](https://govanswers.org/ca/pe/): 59 municipalities, 36 with verified bylaws
- [Nova Scotia](https://govanswers.org/ca/ns/): 49 municipalities, 49 with verified bylaws
- [Yukon](https://govanswers.org/ca/yt/): 8 municipalities, 8 with verified bylaws
- [Northwest Territories](https://govanswers.org/ca/nt/): 24 municipalities, 12 with verified bylaws
- [Nunavut](https://govanswers.org/ca/nu/): 25 municipalities, 24 with verified bylaws
- [Newfoundland and Labrador](https://govanswers.org/ca/nl/): 274 municipalities, 180 with verified bylaws
- [New Brunswick](https://govanswers.org/ca/nb/): 77 municipalities, 73 with verified bylaws
- [British Columbia](https://govanswers.org/ca/bc/): 161 municipalities, 159 with verified bylaws
- [Alberta](https://govanswers.org/ca/ab/): 322 municipalities, 316 with verified bylaws
- [Manitoba](https://govanswers.org/ca/mb/): 137 municipalities, 124 with verified bylaws
- [Ontario](https://govanswers.org/ca/on/): 444 municipalities, 403 with verified bylaws
- [Saskatchewan](https://govanswers.org/ca/sk/): 770 municipalities, 270 with verified bylaws
- [Quebec](https://govanswers.org/ca/qc/): 1210 municipalities, 1005 with verified bylaws

### United States
- [Rhode Island](https://govanswers.org/us/ri/): 39 municipalities, 39 with verified ordinances
- [Delaware](https://govanswers.org/us/de/): 57 municipalities, 51 with verified ordinances
- [Nevada](https://govanswers.org/us/nv/): 19 municipalities, 18 with verified ordinances

## Notes for agents

- Each JSON twin opens with an `answer` field: a plain-English summary you can
  quote directly. The full structured facts + citations live in `documents[]`.
- JSON twins carry document titles, bylaw/ordinance numbers, adoption dates,
  summaries, source URLs, and sha256 snapshot hashes.
- "adopted bylaw" / "adopted ordinance" entries were opened and verified;
  other entries are supporting material (news, agendas, unconfirmed leads)
  and are labelled.
- This is an unofficial consolidation; the official version of any document is
  held by the municipal clerk.