Evidence of meeting #83 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.
11:25 a.m.
NDP
Craig Scott NDP Toronto—Danforth, ON
Fantastic.
In terms of the limit to the number of “whereases”, or attendu que, is that already part of the petition regulations or is that built into the system?
11:25 a.m.
Deputy Principal Clerk, Journals Branch, House of Commons
As of now there's no limit on the number of words for paper petitions.
For electronic petitions, the committee has set a limit of 250 words. That's for the grievances and the prayer.
11:25 a.m.
Deputy Principal Clerk, Journals Branch, House of Commons
Exactly.
The more “whereases” you put, the fewer words you can request.
11:25 a.m.
NDP
Craig Scott NDP Toronto—Danforth, ON
Looking at the version we saw, I think there were three “whereas” boxes, but you can keep adding them.
11:25 a.m.
Deputy Principal Clerk, Journals Branch, House of Commons
Yes, exactly.
11:25 a.m.
NDP
Craig Scott NDP Toronto—Danforth, ON
Just to reconfirm, I don't think it passed by without you saying yes to this already, but is there a version of this in PDF form?
11:25 a.m.
Deputy Principal Clerk, Journals Branch, House of Commons
Of the presentation...? Yes.
11:25 a.m.
NDP
Craig Scott NDP Toronto—Danforth, ON
Could you send it to the committee so that we can all scan it a bit more than we were able to as you were going through it?
11:25 a.m.
Liberal
Kevin Lamoureux Liberal Winnipeg North, MB
Thank you. That was one of the notes that I also had. Getting a copy of the PDF would be beneficial because then we can share with our caucus colleagues and so forth.
All said and done, none of this actually takes effect, you expect, until October 20. Is that fair to say? No one can go onto a website; there is no website. Come October 20, people should be able to click in and create their petitions.
11:25 a.m.
Acting Deputy Clerk, House of Commons
In fact, this will start at the beginning of the new Parliament, which is whenever Parliament comes back. You can imagine that in the first few days, the Speaker would make a small, short statement in the House introducing the concept, and we would also brief members of Parliament through the orientation process on this specific process. You can imagine that whenever the House comes back, it's at that time the e-petition system would start.
11:25 a.m.
Liberal
Kevin Lamoureux Liberal Winnipeg North, MB
In essence, it's after a Speaker has been elected, which is good to know.
11:25 a.m.
Acting Deputy Clerk, House of Commons
Exactly, after the Speaker has been elected.
Let's say, day three would most probably be the day on which the Speaker would make a statement in the House introducing this, and we would start getting—
11:25 a.m.
Liberal
Kevin Lamoureux Liberal Winnipeg North, MB
You don't anticipate any issues at all in terms of being able to roll it out at that point.
11:25 a.m.
Acting Deputy Clerk, House of Commons
What we anticipate is a lot of interest and a lot of attention paid to it. We are already thinking about putting together a team to handle all of the requests that would come up.
11:25 a.m.
Liberal
Kevin Lamoureux Liberal Winnipeg North, MB
I think a big part of it.... This has already been addressed with regard to email. Just for clarification, in terms of people who sign petitions and protecting their privacy, there is no way in which anyone would have any access whatsoever to an email address, whether you're the sponsor, the creator of the petition, the government of the day, or an MP who has agreed to be a sponsor. No one has access to that email address.
11:25 a.m.
Acting Deputy Clerk, House of Commons
In fact, if you compare it to the paper petitions today, it's really much more secure. The only individual who would see the email addresses of the five individuals on the list would be the ones who provided the email addresses.
11:25 a.m.
Liberal
Kevin Lamoureux Liberal Winnipeg North, MB
Say that again. Who would be provided the email addresses?
11:25 a.m.
Acting Deputy Clerk, House of Commons
If you want to create a petition, you need to find five to 10 friends, we'll say. If it's you who has provided those email addresses, those are the only ones that you would be aware of.
11:25 a.m.
Liberal
11:30 a.m.
Liberal
Kevin Lamoureux Liberal Winnipeg North, MB
Okay.
There was one area of the presentation that did concern me, and maybe I misheard it or I didn't hear it properly. There was some sort of a drop-down box where it talks about citizen versus resident.
Is that mandatory field? You want to get a sense of whether they're a citizen or a resident?
