Evidence of meeting #102 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was petitions.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Deputy Clerk, Procedure
—process for the e-petitions. That said, there are further requirements that have been identified by the committee—for instance, the IP address. Clearly, the IP address cannot be from the Government of Canada. That's an example of it. Those are easy things to do.
As you are aware, an email address is like any other address found on a paper petition.
Liberal
Raj Saini Liberal Kitchener Centre, ON
When the response is tabled by the government, how does that information get to the people who have signed a paper petition?
Deputy Clerk, Procedure
That's why I made a reference to the e-petition. The e-petition is fairly easy because we have it in our database. It's a database in the House of Commons, not on the government website. Let's say that Mr. Christopherson tabled a petition in the House—Mr. Christopherson has no access to the information. When a response to an e-petition is tabled in the House, it's easy to refer to or inform the individual who has signed the petition. As for the paper petition, the information is published in the Debates and in the Journals of the House of Commons.
Also, let's say the member is quite active in collecting signatures or having a direct link with those who are petitioning Parliament. That member could get back to those individuals and say that this is a response the government has tabled regarding their petition.
Liberal
Raj Saini Liberal Kitchener Centre, ON
For efficiency's sake, when somebody organizes the paper petition, would it be better if that one person's name were on it who could disseminate that information to everybody else? Would that be a more efficient process?
Deputy Clerk, Procedure
That person could take it upon themselves to do that. That said, you can imagine that person would be gathering information on different individuals who signed the paper petition. That could raise other questions regarding the nature of the information gathered and would remove from the House of Commons the responsibility regarding protection of private information.
Clerk of the House of Commons
I am understanding the question a bit differently. I'm a bit lost in what you're actually asking for.
If the government gives a response to a paper petition as a paper document, the only thing that's noted in the Journals, or possibly the Debates, is the fact that this was actually done. It becomes a sessional paper. In the old days, sessional papers were printed as companion volumes to the Journals, but that was at the end of the session. Unless you actually knew when a response or a sessional paper was deposited in the House, there was no easy way for you to find it or make a request for it. When it was a paper version then, you had actually had to wait until it was published. We used to publish volumes and volumes of sessional papers as part of the journals process.
If you're talking about who finds out when a response to a petition has been tabled in the House, you actually have to do a search. Then you find out that it's been done, but you don't necessarily have access to the response. You have to make a request to have access to the response.
If it's done electronically, all you have to do is to go to the petitions section on the House of Commons website and access it. The process of searching is a lot easier. The information that you want will be found, as opposed to there simply being an indication that something that you're looking for has been done, without actually providing you the information that you want. That's why going through the electronic format will provide tremendous advantages to those who are petitioners and want to know how the government is reacting to this.
Conservative
John Nater Conservative Perth—Wellington, ON
I want to follow up on both the electronic information and the paper petitions. We're hearing a lot lately about protection of personal information and things like that.
I'm curious as to what safeguards are in place to protect data that would have come in online, and also the hard-copy form, because there is information there as well. How many people within the House administration have access to this information? Is there anyone outside of the House administration who has access to any of this information? In the long term, what is done with the information, particularly email addresses and phone numbers? How is that disposed of when the time comes?
Deputy Clerk, Procedure
Mr. Nater, that is a good question. It was one of the main issues in the last Parliament, when the question of e-petitions came up.
The reason is that a lot of information is gathered when you sign a petition, in the sense that there can be a lot of people signing that petition electronically. No one from outside the organization has access to the information that is gathered for the e-petition system. As a member of Parliament, you would have access to basic information from the petitioner, because if you are being asked to sponsor or present a petition, you may want to contact that person to see what that person wants to do, what their motivations are, and all of those things. That is normal, and the individual will agree that this information can be provided to the member of Parliament.
As for the rest of the information, we might identify that 74 individuals came from Nova Scotia, or from different provinces or territories, but that's the only information that is made public. As for internal matters, we have a set of procedural clerks and individuals who work directly on the petitions, but as you can imagine, they are professionals who respect all of the information protocol that we have established.
We keep that information until the electronic petition has been answered and the government response tabled in the House, because we need to send a response back to those who have petitioned Parliament. Shortly afterwards, and in a regular manner, the information is completely eliminated.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
On a paper petition, the MP and their staff have the actual petition and the names, signatures, and addresses of people who signed it.
The proposal before us is that all petitions, both paper and electronic, would now be put on the Parliament of Canada website, along with both the description of the petition—which wasn't available before on paper—and the government response. That's what you're saying would be most effective.
Deputy Clerk, Procedure
We're already working with the Privy Council Office on this, and clearly if this committee is supportive of that idea—without having a specific time frame, because we have not been able to identify that as of now—we will pursue our discussions with the Privy Council Office to make sure that all of that information can be shared as widely as possible.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
Is that okay with the committee? All electronic and paper petitions, plus the responses, would be on the electronic website. That's the only way the petitioner or the presenter would have access to it.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
It sounds like we're hearing that the PCO is pretty involved in this, and that is where challenges could be in this. Maybe we should bring them in and hear from them.
Deputy Clerk, Procedure
The exchanges we've had so far with the Privy Council Office have been very supportive and highly positive on this one. It's really a discussion of a technical nature to make sure that whenever there is a transfer of information between the Privy Council Office and the government, that information is made accessible in the best way possible. It's all of those things, as well as the gathering of information.
As you can imagine, it's also a question of volume. A lot of paper petitions are being tabled in the House. They are usually tabled in only one language, so we need to have them translated. It's the same thing for the response. Those are the types of things we are actively looking at with the Privy Council Office.
Liberal
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
I guess my suggestion would still remain, though. If some of the challenges are faced there, it might be good to hear what exactly their thoughts are.
Liberal
Chris Bittle Liberal St. Catharines, ON
Having heard from the witnesses here, I don't know that it's worth extending the study. That's my thought on things.
Liberal
