Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Nov. 25th, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

We'll go to Mr. Lukiwski for four minutes.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I think I'll start with Ms. Hilderman on this one because I'm not sure, Ms. Fox, if the question I'm about to ask would be better answered by you or by Mr. Winter, who is going to be appearing later this morning. It's about privacy. We have talked at some length in this committee about the need to protect the privacy of those signing e-petitions, specifically to not allow political parties to data mine, to try to take some of that information and use it for their own political purposes.

Ms. Hilderman, I would assume you would agree with that concept, that we need to put in provisions and protocols to prevent data mining from occurring, so I'll ask for a couple of comments on that. Then, Ms. Fox, if we have any time left I'd ask you to comment on, perhaps, what security protocols have been established in the U.K. If you can't or we don't have enough time, I'll ask the same question to Mr. Winter when he appears before us a little later on this morning.

But Ms. Hilderman, we'll start with you.

[Jane Hilderman]

Great.

Absolutely, I think privacy is an important consideration. I know that in order to verify signatures, it's likely you're going to be collecting more than only a name. You're going to be collecting an address, and an email probably, to verify who they are. You're right. There should be some guarantee that the information will be kept securely.

That said, many petition sites do let people have their names listed, if they so choose, and maybe the community they're from, or in this case the riding. I think this is where in my remarks I suggested that there also be consideration as to how you can balance privacy while making sure that there's a feedback loop to parliamentarians—not to political parties but to parliamentarians—that allows them to know what their constituents are thinking about in terms of their petition activities

I think that can be a real strength of an electronic system, and I'm optimistic that, given online expertise that I'm sure you have access to, you can balance the security functions of that with the provision that helps people feel there's a conversation happening with the petition process, that it's not simply citizens putting their names online and then never hearing anything back. Here's a chance, especially if they opt in, to hear back from government if there's a response, or to know that their MP has been notified that this is an issue of importance.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Thank you for that.

To that point, we have also been discussing at this committee mechanisms by which government could respond directly, and in fact, even perhaps allow the petitioners to receive notification as to when the debates may occur in the House, so that people can actually take a look at the debate that's occurring as a result of their signature on a petition.

But Ms. Fox, would it be appropriate for you to comment on this? Are there security protocols in place in the U.K. to prevent political parties from data mining, or is this a question I should better ask Mr. Winter?

[Dr. Ruth Fox]

If Mr. Winter is from the Government Digital Service here in the U.K., I think he would be your best route. Certainly, the GDS would be the best people to speak to on this. As far as I'm aware, the political parties don't have any access to the data. Indeed, the data is not kept for very long actually by government itself, so that has not posed a problem thus far. The bigger problem is whether parliamentarians have access to it.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Sure.

Speaking to your point about the length of time you retain e-petitions, how long is that and what method then...? Is it merely deleted or is there a more secure method of getting rid of those e-petition signatures?

[Dr. Ruth Fox]

Again, I think you'd have to speak to the Government Digital Service. The petitions are open for quite a long period of time, so the data will have to be retained for that period, but what they do with it after, once the petition period has closed, I'm afraid I don't know.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Great. Thank you.

We'll go to Mr. Rankin. It's good to have you here today.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Thank you very much, Chair.

I appreciate your being here. Since I only have a short amount of time, I think I would like to start with Ms. Hilderman from Samara. Thank you.

You talked in your presentation, in your second point, about the signature threshold issue, pointing out that neither Quebec nor the Northwest Territories have such a threshold, and I can certainly see it for the small jurisdiction such as NWT. But the motion before us, M-428, by the member for Burnaby—Douglas, actually talks about one MP sponsoring the petition, so there would not appear to be the kind of role for the backbench committee that we heard about from Dr. Fox, and for 100,000, perhaps five members endorsing it for debate.

What is your recommendation with respect to a signature threshold here?

[Jane Hilderman]

I think this is a real issue for your committee to try to piece out. Building on Dr. Fox's comments, I think it may be to your advantage to think about the flexibility for you as parliamentarians to decide how to deal with a petition. My point was that in part right now...if the motion is implemented as it is suggested, you'll be creating two parallel systems, one for written petitions and one for electronic petitions, which are treated quite differently. For a citizen who's signing something, whether it's by hand or online, what they're doing is expressing their support for the issue. They don't necessarily see why that support should be funnelled through two different sets of rules and processes, one where you only need one MP to support it in order to get some response from government, and another system that would require five MPs.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Doesn't the fact that a member has to stand up and essentially take responsibility address the frivolous and vexatious types of petitions that you want to weed out? Doesn't that address that problem adequately, in your view?

[Jane Hilderman]

Certainly, I think you're probably correct. Another way to deal with it would be at a committee level. There was some concern that you could have a funny petition that gains enough support that could justify debate. But you're right, having an MP sign off on it should mitigate that concern.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

All right.

I would like to go, please, to Dr. Fox. Thank you for your excellent presentation. I just was a little unclear on one point you made in answer to a question, and that concerns the issue of clarity, the number of e-petitions that appear to be rejected as a consequence of being found to be unclear. That was quite startling, and I don't understand why that occurs. If there is this vetting process that you've described, how is it that so many are rejected? What is their fate? Do they get reintroduced after consultation with somebody who's responsible for that?

[Dr. Ruth Fox]

One of the key reasons they may be rejected is that they don't make a specific request. So, if they ask a specific question of the government or a particular department, that would be one of the grounds. Another ground may be that there is a very similar petition and the government has determined it is a duplicate and therefore rejects it. Those are the kinds of grounds. Certainly at the beginning of the process there were an awful lot of rejections. I think it has eased as time has gone on, and the volume has dropped as well, which has made it easier to manage.

With regard to the clarity of the process, one of the issues is, for example, how does the public petition Parliament itself? If the concern is not about a government department, what happens then? If it's about how Parliament is managing its business, there's no facility, for example, to enable the public to petition the Speaker or to petition a committee in that way. So there are some difficulties there and reasons that the petitions have been rejected. One of the difficulties is definitely the search function on the site, which makes it so difficult, given the enormous volume of petitions, to manage that process.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you, Dr. Fox.

We'll go to Mr. MacKenzie; we'll finish up there.

Mr. MacKenzie, you have four minutes.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Thank you.

I think, Dr. Fox, we had heard that one of the issues about petitions initially was that many of them were coming forward that had nothing to do with the federal government, as we would have here. They were dealing with issues, perhaps, that had motor vehicle regulations, and so on. Would those be locked into that 25,000 that you spoke of?

[Dr. Ruth Fox]

Some of them, yes, would be. The bigger problem, I think, has been if it's a petition that's been directed not at central government but at a particular local authority, a council, for example, about a very localized matter, those would be rejected. The other issue, of course, is that in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, in our devolved settlement now, a large amount of domestic policy has devolved to the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales, and so on. If it was in their devolved responsibilities, they would also be rejected.

The problem in the petition system, though, is that there is no mechanism when the petition is rejected to inform the petitioner that they could go to Scotland or Wales, or their local council, and petition them. I think in terms of thinking about the process, signposting elsewhere is quite important. It isn't in the Westminister system at the moment, and that is a flaw.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Sure.

I think most of us would agree that the theory behind electronic petitions is excellent. The problem is that the practicality sometimes gets ahead of where we are. When I hear Ms. Hilderman talk about maybe no threshold on numbers, and so on, and what it does and whether it translates into a committee, I don't know where we'd find the committee time to do some of those things, or even the debate time. Currently I think our take-note debate is scheduled for four hours. It's not that we can't change some of those things, but, Dr. Fox, did I hear you say that your debates are 90 minutes on petition items?

[Dr. Ruth Fox]

Yes, generally speaking. The backbench business committee could seek longer, but generally they've been 90 minutes or less.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

How often would they have had those debates now?

[Dr. Ruth Fox]

I think there have been just over 30. I'll need to check this, but there have been only about 30 since the system was set up.

The committee was certainly concerned at the beginning about being overwhelmed, but with the 100,000 threshold, so few petitions get through that it hasn't been a major problem. I think in our system the bigger issue is what happens to the petitions that get 99,999. What's the form of public engagement in those circumstances? At the moment, there isn't anything much.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Certainly. I might be wrong, but I'm guessing that members of Parliament in your government get letters and notes and telephone calls regularly from constituents.

[Dr. Ruth Fox]

They do on a huge scale, an enormous scale.