Thank you, André.
You have paper copies of those mock-ups in front of you, and they're on the screens as well. I want to take you briefly through what the new site will look like at the launch of the 43rd Parliament.
The look and feel of the petitions website is very much like what we have currently for electronic petitions. The difference is that we've rebaptized it so that it's just called “petitions” rather than “e-petitions”, since we'll be having both paper and electronic petitions. You'll see very obvious buttons that stand out, quick-access buttons that allow you to get to the more popular sections of the website, notably the one in purple that brings you to all e-petitions that are open for signature, since we expect that's what the vast majority of people will be coming to the website to do, to sign an e-petition. That will take them there relatively quickly.
Next, there is a section that allows you to do a search in any of the petitions. There is more information on this site than on the actual petitions site. Also, the information is presented in a more user-friendly way so as to better respect access standards for websites, for instance for visually impaired persons.
We added a button to the right to identify the Parliament concerned. We will archive the petitions of the 42nd Parliament, which is the current one. You will thus have access to them, as well as to those of the 43rd Parliament. At this time, since the site only contains petitions from the current Parliament, there is no information near the button on the right, but it will be possible eventually to do a search in the petitions of a given Parliament.
There are also icons that will allow you to quickly find paper or electronic petitions. In the list, the small icon that looks like a computer screen indicates an electronic petition, and the icon that looks like a sheet of paper is for paper petitions.
Next, if you go to the detailed page for each petition, again it has a layout very similar to what we have currently. There are some small changes to improve a bit of the look and feel of it and make it more accessible. Most notably, we've added a few other elements as well. We've added what language the petition was originally submitted in. As André mentioned, it's very rare for us to receive petitions in both official languages. Usually they're in one or the other language. We'll indicate what the source language is, giving people an idea of whether the text is a translation or the original language.
We've also integrated the text of the government response to the petition directly on that page. Currently there's a PDF version of the response that you can click on, and it opens a new version. This is not great from an accessibility perspective. The text of responses is usually relatively short, a few paragraphs, so it's possible to integrate that text directly in the page of the petition. As we mentioned in the fall, the last time we appeared before the committee, we have an agreement with the Privy Council Office whereby the responses to petitions are going to be transmitted to us electronically, so we'll be doing away with the reams of paper that represents.
As soon as a response is presented in the House by the parliamentary secretary, the Privy Council Office can transmit that text to us electronically. We can quickly upload it to the website, and there's an alert that is sent to the office of the member who presented that petition to let the member know that the government response is available. Rather than having to wait for a paper response to be sent to your office by messenger, which takes a day or two, you'll get an email alert that the response has been uploaded to the website and is available. That's something you can very easily share with people who may have been involved in organizing that paper petition through your own contacts. That's an improvement. The information will be available much more rapidly than is currently the case.
There's also an interesting feature at the bottom of the page. I'm sure you realize that there are often situations of the same paper petition being presented by multiple members or by the same member multiple times. We'll keep a running total of identical petitions at the bottom of the page.
In this example, it concerns health services. This is all fictitious data, but we've created examples of other members who may have presented that same petition, the date when they presented it, and a running total of the number of signatures collected. There were 148 signatures in this example, but also others that had been collected, for a grand total of 568, as you can see at the bottom of the page. It's a way of keeping track of the number of identical petitions that are presented, and also of the total number of signatures collected for them.
The next slide shows what the petitions website will look like on a mobile device. Since it was designed for the current site, it easily adapts to mobile devices, so that people will be able to consult it from various locations.
The next slide shows the government response section, which has now been integrated into the research section. This makes it possible to do a search in all petitions to which the government provided a reply. Here as well, we improved the display, and we provide more information on the status of the petition.
I also want to draw your attention to the small green button that is at the top of the page, right next to the menu. It is the “MP” button.
or “Member of Parliament” in English. That is the button that will allow members to access the MP portal, where they can find information about both paper and electronic petitions.
As André was mentioning, the process we envisage is that when we receive a paper petition in the Journals Branch and it's certified, we will send an electronic certificate that will become available in the member's portal. Rather than the entire petition being returned to your office through internal mail, which takes a day or two, it's uploaded electronically. You'll get an alert automatically to let you know there's a certified petition that's available. You just have to go to this MP portal. You or your delegated staff can then print the certificate and present that petition in the House. It will have the text of the petition and the number of signatories in the same way we do for electronic petitions, on a single sheet of paper.
Once the petition is presented in the House, that certificate will disappear from this section of the portal, so it's not possible to re-present the same petition over and over again.
Once it's presented, the certificate disappears and will instead be added to another new section, for the information of members, which gives you all the petitions that you have presented and information about them, including the latest update and where they are in the process. Has a response been received, and on what date? What date was the petition presented? You have that information there. You can also click on any of those petitions to get more detailed information about them.
That concludes what we want to show you. We're happy to answer any questions you might have for us.