Evidence of meeting #56 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was petition.
A recording is available from Parliament.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
I am getting different answers. Who knows? Can the analyst please—
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Whatever it is, it's a given period of time and right now the only way you can get the floor is through a private member's motion, or if you have a bill, or if there is agreement by the House leaders, but there are very few mechanisms that result in the House—
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Yes, emergency debates. My colleague is helping me.
We are now creating a new avenue where the order is given that the House of Commons shall meet. That is a very big deal. It's a lot of money. It commands the attention of every member of Parliament in terms of having to be aware there is something in the House that they may or may not feel they need to be a part of.
I'm looking at it and asking if that threshold is sufficient. It's a great idea. I especially like the follow-up idea, because right now with petitions people sign them, but do they think about them again? Do they get much follow up? Maybe, but oftentimes no. The real moment is when they sign it and then when it's presented, but other than that, there is not a lot of impact. In this case, I really like the idea that they're notified electronically that there was a debate; the link is provided, and one can see what was said. This is excellent stuff.
Talk to me about your comfort level with the notion that 100,000 signatures, which you can do from home, with 10 MPs signing—and if something is motherhood enough that may not be very hard to get—now triggers x number of hours of House of Commons time. Give me your thoughts on why you think that threshold is sufficient, and why we won't be inundated with what would be petition debates, I guess. Help me work through that, Kennedy. I'm having some problems being comfortable with the idea that you could command the House of Commons to meet for x period of time with all the money and everything that means, with 100,000 signatures and 10 members.
Give me your thoughts.
NDP
Kennedy Stewart NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
Yes, I think that's why the experience from other jurisdictions is really important. This is the fear in the U.K. as well. They thought, "Oh boy, we're going to get swamped with these kinds of things that nobody really wants debates that are frivolous".
The evidence there is that it has been working for three years. They too have a 100,000 person threshold, but they have 60 million people rather than 35 million, so it should be easier per capita to have signatures. They've only had just over 20 hit that level of 100,000 signatures.
NDP
Kennedy Stewart NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
Three years and they've only had about 20 debates. It works out to about six debates a year that they—
NDP
Kennedy Stewart NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
What they found—and this is why the U.K. witnesses are so important. When they put this system into place, they had this initial big spike. Everybody was very excited about it and you did get all kinds of ideas, but as it moves through the process you find that there's a culture that develops around it. Within the country people get used to the system and we're finding fewer and fewer petitions that are questionable, more that are serious. People have thought them through, not just the people who sponsor them, but the signatories as well. They're finding that people will not sign things which they don't think are worth signing.
There is evidence I could present to you that shows the graph of how it's worked. It's settled into something that people now accept as a serious piece of business and they don't abuse it. It shows by the number of debates that have come forward, which is one every two months.
I will mention some of the topics that have made it through in the U.K. system. One was asking for full government disclosure and publication of all documents, discussions, and reports relating to the 1989 Hillsborough disaster. That was a soccer stadium that burned to the ground and there was never an inquiry. The local people there.... If you ever go to that area you know it's something that haunts the area. They were able to get 100,000 signatures and have a debate in the House on it which was a tremendous success.
Conservative
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
Yes.
I don't know who had that in the pool, so we won't pay up until we do that.
Conservative
Conservative
Tom Lukiwski Conservative Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK
Thanks very much.
Number one, I think David raises a very good point and I'm glad you gave some examples. Twenty over the course of three years is interesting. I thought there would have been more particularly because, as you say, there's roughly double the population size in the U.K. than there is here. Thank you for that. That's very helpful.
On the administrative side, when you were discussing this concept with people in the U.K., how much extra money and perhaps staff are required to administer that process?
You talked about the backbench committee, but obviously they're not the ones who administer the petitions coming in and doing all of the follow-up. Has the U.K. determined the cost involved in doing this?
NDP
Kennedy Stewart NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
I turned to the Canadian example first where they've done this in Quebec. They did it under existing budgets and existing staff. There were no extra costs with this. For the Northwest Territories, it cost them $8,000 to set it up and it cost them $800 per year to run it. Within our Canadian jurisdictions, that's the administration of the website and making sure that things.... Compared to what we spend on other things here, it's very low.
I think you'd find the same in the U.K., because the website infrastructure and all of the security that are required are already in place. They already have petitions staff and clerks, and the additional costs are very low. I'm sure we could get estimates from a clerk here.
What changes is the level of security. The two measures I suggest were the randomized.... You see that all the time. There's an address and you type it in, so that means you can't generate spam. The other is when an e-mail is sent back to you and you have to say, “Yes, I sent this”, those are the two verification processes that are very cheap.
Other things you can get into are very expensive. In British Columbia they have petitions that can trigger referenda with initiative. They have to do a much more robust signature verification, which can be expensive. Of course you could call those witnesses as well. That's not at all what I'm suggesting.
The other jurisdictions find that this kind of, I would say, not a super maximum security process is adequate and they haven't had any fraud or anything like that. I think the costs are.... I'm surprised they were so low. By talking to the clerks, they could tell you.
Conservative
Tom Lukiwski Conservative Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK
If we entered into this kind of situation, you mentioned before that the 100,000 threshold would require 10 MPs. Going back to something along the lines that Mr. Hsu was talking about, whether or not an MP agrees or disagrees with a particular constituent on his petition, if there was a minimum threshold of, say, 1,000 signatures required, and it was generated and initiated through a citizens' group in the country, do you see a requirement that at least one MP needs to endorse that particular issue, or could petitions be generated and sent in by an advocacy group or a citizens' group with no signatures and no endorsement by an MP?
NDP
Kennedy Stewart NDP Burnaby—Douglas, BC
No. The one MP who has to sponsor is the initial gatekeeper. I don't think we should move. That's what we do currently and we should stick with that. That's the Canadian tradition, and I don't think we should have this wide-open access to websites.
The other thing is that having the initial filter spreads through the offices. An MP's staff would get a request. They would look at it. They would say they don't think they're going to do that. That saves the clerk from going through thousands and thousands of petitions and then sending them on to MPs. I actually think it's the best use of resources. If I'm not mistaken, they may be moving to working that way in the U.K., but again, it would be worth talking to somebody from there.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
Thank you very much.
Madam Crowder, it's great to have you here today. You get four minutes.
NDP
Jean Crowder NDP Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC
Perfect. Thank you very much.
I've been at PROC before and it's nice to be back.
Mr. Stewart, it's great to see you here talking about what I think arguably is an enhancement to democracy, but I also come from the school.... This is going to surprise my Conservative colleagues. I like to see our money well spent, as I'm sure most members here do.
I have a question about resources.
Conservative
NDP
Jean Crowder NDP Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC
Mr. Christopherson pointed this out. It's not just the cost of setting up online petitions and administering those online petitions. There are additional costs that can be triggered.
I want to look at the Northwest Territories for a moment. If it goes through the whole process, a member may move that the petition be referred to a standing or special committee.
When you talked about the cost in the NWT, you indicated it was an $8,000 initial start-up and an ongoing cost of $800 per year. Is that $800 per year strictly with regard to the petition process, or does it include things like special committees?