Procedure and House Affairs committee  That's certainly open to debate. Our real concern was that by having the requirement of a certain threshold number of MPs to sponsor, you could end up with the awkward situation where you have hundreds of thousands of people and nothing being done. From where we sit, we'd certainly be open to it being referred to committee or being dealt with in some other way, as long as the door wasn't simply shut because they didn't meet the threshold of the MP sponsors.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Absolutely. I think that the experiences both of colleagues at the table here and then also around the world.... There are many other jurisdictions that have implemented this. We think it's a simple matter of translating a principle that everyone accepts into the 21st century.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you for the question. We do a number of initiatives mainly through our website and we also have people in the field. We use a hybrid system. We have the petition placed on the website and then we also have our field agents. When they are soliciting for donations and such, they are also presenting these petitions to people.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, we do our best. I think it's probably akin to any other organization that's collecting signatures: it's difficult to verify everything. I think that's been alluded to by many of the other people who've presented. I think we have to bear in mind when we're talking about e-petitions that we don't make the standard absurdly high, when we consider that right now when we use regular petitions, there's only a certain level of scrutiny.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Mr. Chair, it's a pleasure to be here today and to speak to Motion M-428. I thank the committee for the invitation. This motion is, I think we can all agree, one that clearly cuts across the political spectrum, and we're happy to speak to it. My name is Aaron Wudrick. I am the new federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.