Mr. Speaker, in another life I used to be a superintendent of education. I remember well-and I will document it chapter and verse-the town was Springdale on the northeast coast of Newfoundland and the issue was whether to amalgamate the school services.
As members will realize, under the Constitution, Newfoundland has a denominational system of education. At the moment in 1994 it has in effect three systems: a Roman Catholic system, a Pentecostal system and an integrated system, that being the integration of several of the religious denominations which formerly had their separate services. I am talking now about a point in time just before that integration. We had in a given community a number of individual school systems.
The proposal was that they be integrated, so somebody had a petition. On the petition in that community of 3,000, fully 85 per cent of the petitioners-I do not have the numbers but it represented the overwhelming adult population of that particular community-wanted what we called amalgamation, a bringing together of the separate services, an integration. However, within two weeks somebody else produced a petition with the overwhelming adult population having signed it in which about 58 per cent did not want the amalgamation. Clearly many of the
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same names showed up on both petitions within a period of 10 or 12 days.
My point is that petitions serve a very worthwhile purpose but they can be abused. One of the reasons they can be abused is that it is difficult when a neighbour comes to the door to say no to him when all he is looking for is a signature.
Members of the House will acknowledge that very often petitions get signed without due thought. They ought not to be taken as gospel. They ought to be taken as an indicator though. If someone comes to me with a petition on a subject that states 85 per cent of the community is of this particular mind, I take that to be a very strong message.
Do members know what is even better than petitions? A ballot box because there they cannot vote both ways. There they vote one way or the other and they are obliged to stick with it.
Let us understand where I am coming from on petitions. Petitions are a very important instrument, a very important mechanism. That is why we as legislators or parliamentarians have always given petitions-and by we I mean the many people who have gone before us in this Parliament and the British Parliament-petitions a place of pre-eminence in the Chamber.
It is the grievance of the people. It is the people saying collectively that they are for something or they are against something or are concerned about a particular issue. Members of Parliament who make light of that instrument are making light of a lot of people. They are making light of an instrument that has served Parliament and the people of the country very well for a long time.
Having said that, the danger is that we make the illogical transition from petitions as a means of sending a signal, petitions as a means of recording a grievance, to government by petition.
I believe I illustrated the problem with government by petition with my example. Had we followed both petitions back then in the community of Springdale several years ago we would have had two schools. We would have had the amalgamated one because that is what 85 per cent of the people wanted. We also would have had all the separate schools because that is what 58 per cent of the people wanted within the same 10 or 12 day period.
That is the difficulty.
That is the conundrum with petitions. Very often they would have you do things which are mutually exclusive. I put it to any member of this House that if they go out and get a petition on any issue, in the same week I will get a petition with as many names on the other side of that issue. The beauty of petitions is that they send a signal. The weakness of petitions is that they send mixed signals.
The weakness is what happens at that door, as I mentioned a moment ago. It is difficult unless you have a very well thought out position on an issue. If you are publicly known to be, for example, against abortion it is easy to say to the individual who comes to the door: "You know my position on that and I cannot sign your petition which is for abortion". However, with the exception of three or four conscience issues such as abortion, capital punishment and euthanasia, people have to live together in small communities and when a neighbour comes to the door with that petition, often it is easier. I am not saying it is right. I am not justifying it. I am characterizing what happens thousands of times with petitions. Thousands of times people sign a petition and are known in many cases to have signed petitions on opposite sides of the issue.
That is why I started with an example, not a generalization, a specific example in which I was involved in a situation in which people within eight or ten or twelve days had signed opposite sides of two mutually exclusive petitions.
That is why it is dangerous. It is ill advised to make the jump from petitions as a form of grievance, petitions as a way of testing the water, petitions as a way of knowing what people think on an issue, to government by petitions.
Let us look at the essence of this particular motion. It says in effect that petitions are an important vehicle. It says in effect that petitions ought to have more of a role in this Chamber.
I say to my friend from Edmonton Southwest, if that is his real motivation here, and I would suspect that it is, there are ways to do that. His colleague from Calgary North dismisses the idea of private members' bills. A lot of private members bills go down the drain, a lot because they should. However, a lot of others have gone down the drain because the member did not do his or her homework. Very often if a member is seized with an issue, seized with the importance of an issue, that member can stick handle his or her way through the maze here and get a private members' bill passed in this House. I have seen it happen many times.
Before people start denigrating the private members' bill, they ought to check the record in this House and they will find that many private members' bills have made it past the post in this particular Chamber.