Evidence of meeting #58 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.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
We'll call the meeting to order. We're here pursuant to the order of reference of Wednesday, January 29, the study of motion M-428 on electronic petitions.
We have two guests with us today. First is Ms. Hilderman from Samara. Great to have you with us today.
Second is Dr. Fox. Can you hear us?
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
Great. We're going to get started.
We're going to give each of you a bit of an opening statement. Then the members around the table will ask you questions.
I think we'll start with you, Dr. Fox. I like to do that with the teleconference in case we lose it; at least you get some points in.
Welcome, and good evening to you, I guess. Please go ahead if you can with your opening statement.
Director and Head of Research, Hansard Society
Yes, good afternoon. Thank you for inviting me to appear before the committee.
Perhaps I could just explain the Hansard Society's role and interest in e-petitions in the Westminster context. The Hansard Society is a political research and education charity based in London, but we work with registered charities around the world. Fundamentally, I suppose our role is described as Parliament's critical friend at Westminster. We've taken an interest for many years in public engagement with politics and with Parliament.
We regard e-petitions as an important way in which the public can engage with legislatures. But they pose some dangers if the system is not right, if the process and procedure is not right. Back in 2011, when the Westminster Parliament launched, I should say, the British government, really, launched the e-petition system here in the U.K., it did so with very little consultation with Parliament. Yet it is Parliament that has had to manage the problems with it.
As a consequence, back in 2012, the Hansard Society was asked by the backbench business committee of the House of Commons to undertake a study of the petitions system, which we did and which has led to what is now a current procedure committee inquiry into reform of the system here in London.
So that's the background and context. We wrote a paper called “What next for e-petitions?”, which set out many of the concerns with the Westminster system, which may be of interest to the committee in terms of thinking about the issues if you do go ahead and implement an e-petition system.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
Thank you.
Is that report available to us electronically? Can we pick it up someplace?
Director and Head of Research, Hansard Society
Yes, I can certainly send a copy. It's available via our website for free download. That's possible.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
Great. We'll make sure we get that done, then.
Thank you very much.
We'll move to Ms. Hilderman, then, on your opening statement. Then we'll move to questions by members.
Jane Hilderman Acting Director and Research Manager, Samara
I am Samara's research manager and an acting director at the organization. Samara, for anyone who doesn't know, is an independent non-partisan charity, working to improve political participation in Canada. I'm joined by my colleague, Mark Dance, who is providing some social media coverage of the committee today.
Today I'd like to discuss the context for Samara's support for e-petitions, as well as make suggestions for the committee's consideration. Yesterday, Samara submitted a written brief to the clerk of the committee that provides some greater detail about some of our suggestions. I understand that the text needs to be translated and then will be provided to committee later this week.
The House of Commons belongs to Canadians, yet public opinion suggests that Canadians increasingly see themselves as removed from the work that happens here on their behalf. E-petitions, we think, offer a really promising starting point for Parliament's improvement and innovation in the 21st century, in part because petition-signing is already a very common activity among Canadians.
In a recently published paper by Samara, we examined 20 different ways Canadians participate in politics beyond voting. We found that over half of Canadians, 51%, said they'd signed a petition in the last year. Importantly, these rates of petition-signing were similarly as high for the 18- to 34-year-old age group at 49%.
We're supportive of e-petitions because a well-designed system can do three things. First, it can ensure greater access for Canadians to Parliament's petitioning process. Second, it can help MPs better understand what issues are of concern to Canadians. Third, the implementation of an e-petition system would send a really much-needed signal from MPs to Canadians that they are willing to take steps to improve Canada's democratic process at a time when citizen satisfaction with the way democracy works has been falling.
So what are some considerations for a well-designed system? Samara has identified four points. First, ensure that openness, participation, responsiveness, and consistency are core principles as you design the petition process. This really may sound simple, but it's worth emphasizing how important it is to imagine that you are standing in the shoes of a citizen who will interact with the e-petition process and rules.
In practice, for example, this means taking steps to help ensure that signing a petition is a simple process, particularly given that research has shown that the first 10 hours after a petition launch are the most critical for gaining public momentum.
The second recommendation focuses on how we will deal with petitions as a Parliament. I suggest considering a role for a committee or committees to consider petitions as well. Among legislatures that have been introducing e-petitions as of late, including Scotland, Wales, in Australia, Queensland and Tasmania, and in Canada, Quebec and the Northwest Territories, none of them apply a signature threshold to launch a debate in the legislature directly.
I think it's important for the committee to consider why that is the case, why they've chosen to make those decisions as an appropriate response to petitions.
Third, it's really important to be able to clearly communicate to Canadians how e-petitions will be used and to see this as an opportunity to remind Canadians of the way they can express their ideas to members of Parliament through petitions and other means. For example, building on Dr. Fox's point, it is really important to minimize the risk of public disillusionment when petitions, electronic or otherwise, do not have an immediate or significant impact on legislation. This means helping set an appropriate level of public expectation where e-petitions are concerned.
Fourth and finally, e-petitions can be another tool for MPs to understand their constituent's concerns. In our exit interviews with former members of Parliament, a frequently cited challenge is that they don't necessarily have the easiest way of understanding what their constituents are most concerned about. They generally rely on citizens coming forward and contacting their office through correspondence, or go out to local events to gather opinions. Could citizens, upon signing, have the chance to notify an MP that they care about a petition issue? Or alternatively could MPs receive an automated report once or twice a month that advises on the number of constituents who have been signing petitions and on what issues? These are some of the sort of out-of-box examples that might be of interest to committee and provide further value-added for the investment you hope to make on an e-petition system.
Samara is happy to serve as a resource to all parliamentarians and political parties, and we hope our oral presentation and brief will provide some valuable ideas for members of the standing committee as they deliberate M-428.
Thank you so much.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
Thank you very much
We'll go to questions by members.
Mr. Richards, you're going to go first, then.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Wild Rose, AB
Mr. Chair, thank you. My friend, Mr. Lukiwski, may have some questions as well.
I'll start with the guest we have by video conference today.
In your opening remarks, you briefly referred to some problems that you had with your system, but didn't elaborate much on them. I wonder whether you want to elaborate a bit on what some of the problems you've had were.
Director and Head of Research, Hansard Society
Certainly.
The first issue is really a constitutional and ownership issue that may not be relevant in your case. Here, the system was introduced by the government rather than by the House of Commons, or indeed Parliament—both chambers. It was the government that set up the IT system—the website that runs the e-petitions system, the infrastructure—but it was Parliament, the House of Commons, that had to manage the end result.
We have a 100,000-signature threshold here for consideration of a petition by the House. It was the backbench business committee of the House of Commons that had to manage that, but it hadn't been involved at all in the process of discussion or negotiation with the government about how that would work. There were some problems as a result, when government time in the House was not set aside for the backbench business committee to enable it to consider, quickly enough, the petitions that had reached that 100,000 threshold. There were some reputational and media problems that arose as a result of petitions reaching the threshold and of there being a delay at the point at which they could be considered.
There was also an issue about who owns the data and who has access to and can utilize the data. Parliament—the House of Commons, the backbench business committee members—did not know who the petitioners were. They had very little information about who the petitioners were, because the data was owned or held by government. So there were some issues there.
The second issue involves the threshold, the introduction of the 100,000 signatures for consideration of the debate. It was presented in the media as if there would be debates, but in fact the wording around the petition systems was that the backbench business committee would consider it. The issue was that, if you reached the 100,000 threshold and you didn't have a debate, it created a public engagement problem.
Now, that hasn't happened on many occasions. But for example, when a bill is going through Parliament and is being debated at length, if a petition on that subject then reaches 100,000 signatures, should it be debated again alongside the existing primary legislation processes and procedures that are ongoing at the time? There was an issue there in relation to a bill for reform of the NHS that caused some difficulties.
Should members themselves be allowed to use a petition and to register petitions? At the beginning in the U.K., that was not stipulated clearly, and some members did use the petition system for that purpose. Eventually it was decided that in fact this probably wasn't appropriate—members have other ways to register their concerns—and that this was for the public, not for members.
The U.K. has very low admissibility criteria, in relation to being a U.K. citizen and having a postal code that is verified on the system. But certainly as of this summer, when I last looked at it, something like just fewer than 25,000 petitions had been rejected as inadmissible in some way, either because they were not clear enough in what they were asking for or were duplicates of other petitions. There was an issue there in relation to clarity, as to what people were being asked to do and whether they clearly understood it. Also, in terms of a concern around duplication, how do you deal with petitions that are very similar?
Third, what is the role of MPs in this? Originally, in the House of Commons members wanted quite a gold-plated system that would provide them with direct links to petitioners and through which they would be informed when their constituents had registered a petition. That isn't really now the case with the system that we have. We have a much more flexible system, but it has caused some difficulty for members who feel that they're not terribly well informed about what their constituents are doing and the issues they are raising.
In order to have a debate on a petition, if it reaches 100,000 signatures, it's still at the call of these members to take it forward; and there was no information on the system to petitioners at the beginning to clearly indicate to them that as well as getting the 100,000 signatures they would need to get a member to sponsor it for them in the House. That caused some difficulties and delays in bringing forward a number of the petitions for consideration before the backbench business committee. There are still some issues there around whether members are getting as much information as they would like.
Then there the a wider issue of management in terms of managing the system going forward, making sure that Parliament or the House, if it is going to be responsible for it, has the skills, the capacity, and the infrastructure to develop the system, to take account of any future IT developments, social media developments, that will no doubt emerge in the coming years, and to ensure that it is kept up to date and is as easy and as flexible in the way that the lady giving evidence for Samara has indicated is necessary.
Certainly here in the U.K., government has greater access to IT capacity skills and resources than does the Parliament at the present time. Therefore, at the moment, we have a situation where it is managing the IT infrastructure and Parliament is managing the parliamentary process. Our view, very strongly, is that the parliamentary process of just going for a debate is not good enough, that there are many other ways in which the House might wish to consider petitions and in which petitioners themselves might wish Parliament to consider it. For example, going to a committee for consideration, possibly being tagged to the order paper, being related to a question in the House as opposed to a full blown debate.... There are a range of ways in which it could be considered and at the moment, the situation where only if you get 10,000 signatures do you get any kind of written response from a government minister and only if you get to 100,000 would it be considered for a debate is rather inflexible.
Those are, broadly, the key concerns.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Wild Rose, AB
I don't think I have a whole lot of time left.
I have none.
Okay.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
Thank you for your question.
We'll go to Mr. Scott for seven minutes.
NDP
Craig Scott NDP Toronto—Danforth, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Benefiting from Dr. Fox's presence again, on the Preston principle that we don't want you to disappear, I'll start my questions with you, Dr. Fox, and then move on to our Samara rep.
You were talking a bit about the backbench business committee in deciding which e-petitions that receive 100,000 would go forward to debate and you suggested that the process by which the petition system was created has created problems for the committee, so that's been very useful.
I wanted to delve into one particular aspect, and I'm not sure if it's played a role in determining whether any 100,000-signature petitions have gone to debate or not. It's the question of duplication of petitions, which is, a petition comes in and it's about the agri-business and saving seed, and another petition in roughly the same time period comes forward and is about agri-business, saving seed, and its connection to the specific economic strategies of GMO corporations. They're not exactly the same and you can imagine, as well, that although they overlap, the premises of one, the preambular premises, might be different, and the plea for relief might also be different.
Is there any experience yet with determining what degree of duplication is too much and when one has to sit in the queue until another has gone forward? Is there any kind of experience with that? My immediate concern is this. I would prefer to let a thousand flowers bloom and allow petitioners to frame in their own language what an issue is about and would have no particular problem with petitions going forward on the same topic, but I'm concerned that there's a fair bit of emphasis in other petition systems on duplication. Is there any experience with that?
Director and Head of Research, Hansard Society
Yes, in the U.K., essentially what happened was that a member of staff in the Office of the Leader of the House of Commons was left at the beginning to determine what constitutes a duplicate. There was no process around it whatsoever so it was very much sort of “try it and see how it works”. They were, quite obviously, struck at the beginning by the sheer volume of petitions that came in. It was very difficult in the early days to figure out an effective way of dealing with duplicates.
They still haven't in a sense resolved the problem. I'll give you the example that's been relevant here. There were concerns about a death penalty e-petition. They were sure that 100,000 signatures would be generated for an e-petition supporting the reintroduction of the death penalty. What in fact happened was you ended up with dozens of different types of e-petitions on the death penalty, none of which ever reached 100,000, and therefore, considered for debate.
Westminster, in a sense, because it only has the threshold of 100,000 to be considered for a debate, simply ignores the problem. This is why we've argued that a petitions committee, which could look at a number of petitions in a particular area of policy, could decide over a period of time to look at a number of petitions that have achieved different levels of signature, to decide what should be done with them, and to have a debate on the death penalty and all the various aspects of it that the public had raised in their petitions. At the moment, in Westminster, they simply don't get anywhere. They're simply ignored, and therefore, there is a concern that it's a very thin form of public engagement, which is why we would recommend to you that you have some kind of committee system to deal with that.
NDP
Craig Scott NDP Toronto—Danforth, ON
Okay. That helps a lot. Thank you.
I would also note, just by way of your very careful observation earlier, that our Westminster system could differ enough from yours that certain things wouldn't be the case. When a petition with no fewer than 25 signatures, tabled in Parliament, is enough to require the government to answer, regardless of whether or not there are several petitions on the same thing, quite obviously the government will consolidate its responses and give almost the same response to similar petitions, but it has the opportunity to vary the response a bit.
So even with only 25 signatures, at the moment, we have a government that has to at least respond. What we do in the parliamentary sense with these petitions with very few signatures is another question. That's just to let you know, on that one point about how duplication would interact with low signatures, that the government does still have to respond here.
You indicated that we can get hold of something called “What next for e-petitions?”
NDP
Craig Scott NDP Toronto—Danforth, ON
From the questions from my colleague Mr. Richards, or even from what I've just said, and putting aside whatever you've already said, I'm just wondering if there are any specific recommendations for reforming the e-petition system in the U.K. as contained in that document, or that you would now want to put on the table that you haven't already mentioned.
Director and Head of Research, Hansard Society
First of all would be a petitions committee, I think, to consider a number of routes in which a petition could be considered.
Secondly, you mentioned that you have an existing paper petition system. I would think about how you integrate it together with the e-petition system.
What we've ended up with here in the U.K. is in effect three petition systems: an e-petition system for the House of Commons, a written system for the House of Commons, and a written system for the House of Lords. They're all slightly different. Actually, in an integrated system, e-petitions are simply a technological way of delivering petitions quickly. So integrating them, thinking about how the e-route and the written route are similar, and what procedures and processes you want for them both, would be useful.
Then I would think very strongly about the member role you want in this process. That is absolutely vital. In the U.K. system, what we've ended up with is quite a thin form of engagement, where members of the public engage with a website. They don't really have that much engagement with Parliament and with MPs.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
Great, and if we all just smile for a second....
Your time is now up.