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.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
Okay, well, if it's as simple as that, I have no issue with that.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
Okay, we are on number 6. This is a fairly major potential change:
Consider creating thresholds, similar to the e-petition system in the United Kingdom, whereby e-petitions which receive large amounts of signatures are entitled to a debate in the House of Commons.
I think it's what, half a million or something in the United Kingdom? Then there's a mandatory debate in the House of Commons.
Principal Clerk, Chamber Business and Parliamentary Publications
It's 100,000.
Liberal
Clerk of the House of Commons
Presumably, but again, that's a decision that's entirely yours.
Liberal
Chris Bittle Liberal St. Catharines, ON
I think this process has a significant potential to be hijacked by groups with the money to do so, and I think it could potentially become a ridiculous process. I don't support that.
Liberal
David Graham Liberal Laurentides—Labelle, QC
If there is public interest in a particular debate, we already have methods to do that through emergency debates and take-note debates, so I don't think it's necessary to put it in this system. If the House leaders want to get together and create a debate, that can happen already.
Liberal
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
The last one is number seven:
Allow petition drafters to suggest or select from a list of subject keywords...that will be applied to their petition, rather than having them assigned, as they are a key feature for attracting unsolicited signatures.
Mr. Gagnon, do you have a comment on this?
Deputy Clerk, Procedure
Yes.
All of the titles that are given to petitions are done by professionals, who identify the content but also make sure that the way this content is identified is also identified in a similar fashion in the Debates of the House, in the committee proceedings. Also, when the responses to petitions are tabled, they are using that title.
For research purposes, or for individuals who are interested in the subject matter, it is much easier to find that information. Also, as you can imagine, the idea is to make sure that the titles that are used are not highly partisan in the way they are presented. What we're talking about here is a public petition, and clearly you want to stay away from highly partisan words or controversial words.
Clerk of the House of Commons
To build on what André just said, I think there is a question here of losing control over an element of our own website. I'm not sure that there is a particular advantage in letting the drafters of a petition select the key words that somehow we might be obliged to assign to our website so that people can search using that terminology.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
Under the system we just approved, where paper petitions and electronic petitions will be online, if someone put in the word “softwood lumber”, would they get all the paper and electronic petitions? Would they be able to search that way?
Deputy Clerk, Procedure
I'm not sure I can go into the details. The answer to that is yes, but usually what is identified is not only the general topic, but other data that is associated with that word. That's the usefulness and the preciseness of the system that has been put in place, so you can do research that can guide you to the information you are looking for.
As you can imagine, if individuals would want to identify the precise name of the petition, you could lose some of those elements.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
I did two things in preparation for this intervention.
One was that I considered the situation we face in my own experience, with my family's business, in designing a website and trying to steer people in certain directions. You have people going to our website and trying to find out about women's summer blouses. They have a colour range, age range, and size range that they're interested in, and it's an inherently difficult task to not either flood them with every blouse, or alternatively make it too narrow. If it's too narrow it leaves out.... It is not an easy task. I'll just observe that first.
We aren't the only ones who struggle with this; everybody who is marketing online has this problem. I wouldn't want to give the Clerk's staff the challenge of figuring out something that people who have lots of money and a strong financial incentive haven't yet been able to figure out. That's one thought.
The second thing I did was that I went to my own petitions. There are two that I've sponsored, E-48 and E-1457, and I looked up the key words. I think I'm right that these are the key words that would trigger my finding one of these two petitions. There are six key words. One of these was on having a referendum prior to any change in the electoral system, and the second one was on a national day of solidarity for victims of anti-religious bigotry and violence.
It looks to me that what you have as the key words are, number one, “electoral reform”; number two, “M-153”, which is a reference to a motion, and that is referenced in any petition; number three is “national day of solidarity for victims of anti-religious bigotry and violence”, which is effectively the header of that motion; number four is “referenda”; number five is “religious discrimination”; and number six is “victims”.
In each case, it's these key words, and then it says “results one”. I assume that means that if I type in any of these things, I'd be led only to this particular petition.
Is that correct?
Principal Clerk, Chamber Business and Parliamentary Publications
It could also be any other petition that has those. You may have multiple petitions and different results, one for each of these, but I assume only one petition has these.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
In this case, it says one result for each of them. Can I assume only one petition has these?
Principal Clerk, Chamber Business and Parliamentary Publications
If you click on the keyword and it only brings back one petition, it's the only one that has that keyword.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
The obvious way of building a fuller set of keywords is to retain each keyword, or sometimes a key phrase in practice, and then as new related petitions come along over time, as much as possible, try to stick with the existing keywords as a way of developing a universe of keywords that grows organically. I think that would be the best way of doing it.
My petition on the day of solidarity is going to expire in about a week and it hasn't set off an avalanche of responses, to put it mildly. It could be that in the future someone else will come along with a petition worded somewhat differently. It would be reasonable for a user who's thinking of signing up to look at that petition to find out if there was a previous one that was worded somewhat differently. It would lead to a more informed user prior to their attaching their signature to something. Just as a suggestion, if you could retain that universe and use it for future tags on petitions, I think that would be helpful.
Clerk of the House of Commons
I think that's one of the reasons we prefer to work with professional indexers, people who understand the nature of the work. Building a network of phrases that alludes to a similar topic allows for a more profitable search than just using such a specific, tight terminology that if you don't actually use it, you can't find it. It's the same sort of thing as if I spell “co-operate”, “co-op” or “coop”; I can find some, but I won't find all.
I think that's what André was pointing to. We have indexers who are basically trying to unify the approach taken to all of the parliamentary documents we produce to make sure that outsiders or insiders who want to access specific information end up with the best results.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
Right.
As a continuation on that, one of these called for a referendum prior to changing the electoral system. If someone types in “referenda”, I'm assuming what should happen is that the plural or the singular leads to the same thought.