ca-eli-mcp

MCP server for Canadian federal legislation via the Justice Laws Website (laws-lois.justice.gc.ca), the Department of Justice Canada's official source for consolidated Acts and regulations. Bilingual (English/French).

What this is not

No free-text search - the Justice Laws Website has no search API of its own. This connector is by-code only (the same limitation as ie-eli-mcp for Ireland): you need to already know the code (e.g. "C-46" for the Criminal Code) or a short title to look one up.
Federal only - provincial and territorial legislation is out of scope.
No case law - CanLII's terms of service forbid bulk redistribution and its content API requires a per-identity key, which breaks the zero-cloud pattern this connector otherwise follows. Not attempted here.

Tools

Tool	Purpose
`ca_get_document`	Metadata (title, in-force status, last-consolidated date) for one act or regulation
`ca_get_text`	Full consolidated XML text of the same document
`ca_coverage`	Declare what this connector covers, when each family was captured, and - explicitly - what it does NOT cover. Every gap carries a fallback.

Every response carries lex_uri (the XML source), source_url (the public HTML page), and human_readable_citation (e.g. "Criminal Code (C-46)").

Install

Terminal

pip install ca-eli-mcp

Windows 11 with Smart App Control

Smart App Control blocks unsigned executables, which covers uvx.exe, pip.exe and the ca-eli-mcp.exe launcher that pip writes at install time. The python.exe and py.exe from the python.org installer are signed by the Python Software Foundation, so running the module through the interpreter works:

bash

python -m pip install ca-eli-mcp
python -m ca_eli_mcp

pip.exe is blocked for the same reason, so install with python -m pip, not pip install. If python is not on PATH, use the Windows launcher: py -3 -m ca_eli_mcp.

config.json

{ "mcpServers": { "ca-eli-mcp": { "command": "python", "args": ["-m", "ca_eli_mcp"] } } }

Do not turn Smart App Control off to work around this - it cannot be re-enabled without reinstalling Windows.

Configuration

Env var	Default
`CA_ELI_CACHE_DIR`	`~/.matematic/cache/ca-eli`
`CA_ELI_AUDIT_DIR`	`~/.matematic/audit`
`CA_ELI_BASE_URL`	`https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca`

License

Apache-2.0 (code). Justice Laws Website content is Government of Canada material (see SOURCES.md).