That, in the opinion of this House, the government should consider the advisability of amending the Standing Orders to put in place a procedure whereby, at least once during a session, petitions presented during that session are considered by the elected representatives of Canadians, and may be the subject matter of debate and brought to a vote at the end of the debate, such as for example:
(a) the subject matter of the petition prohibiting the importation, distribution, sale and manufacture of "serial killer cards",
(b) the subject matter of the petition requesting changes to the Young Offenders Act to make it more difficult for dangerous young offenders to be released, such as the petition presented in memory of the late Rosalynn Dupuis, and
(c) a petition which will be presented requesting the government to bring forward a bill which would make recall of members of the House of Commons a part of the law.
Mr. Speaker, it is with a great deal of pleasure that I rise on this very historic day. As the viewers have seen and as we in the House have experienced, this is the first change to our prayers in almost 120 years. This would indicate to all of us that while things may change slowly they can and they do indeed change.
I am very pleased to speak to the motion. As I speak today and as we consider the motion we should think of the underlying philosophy upon which it is based. It is part of a greater ideal of ensuring Canadians a continuing role or place in the debates of the nation through the use of working toward more direct democracy and the participation of citizens in the national political life of our nation.
The right of citizens to be heard and the right of citizens to be recognized and to receive action are fundamental to any nation or any parliament that wishes to strengthen its democratic conditions.
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Petitions are an effective means of providing Canadians a greater role in setting the national agenda. The use of petitions is one of the oldest forms of allowing citizens a form of redress, dating back to the days of King Edward in the 13th century. It is through the presentation of petitions that the introduction of legislation by bills came about. Petitions are the planted seed from which our parliamentary traditions sprouted. Therefore their significance should not be ignored.
I am not the first person to stand in the House in recent years to speak to the veracity of petitions. I will quote from Hansard , June 1, 1983. Stan Schellenberger, the member for Wetaskiwin at the time, presented a private member's bill. In support of that bill he said the following:
The practice of putting petitions to a legislative body is not new. It has been happening for hundreds of years. We have brought from the mother Parliament in Great Britain to this institution the practice of presenting petitions to Parliament. From the beginning, the presentation of petitions was allowed by Parliament as a means for ordinary citizens to bring their grievance to the attention of the House of Commons.
It is a method by which ordinary citizens can bring their grievances, concerns and issues to the House of Commons, to the Parliament of Canada. It is not just a safety valve that we can accept petitions, many with thousands of signatures and many with hundreds of thousands of signatures, reject them and then forget them. It is not just a means of allowing the citizens to let off steam so they do not explode. It is a means whereby the citizens of the country are able to establish a direct link with members of Parliament on an issue by issue, day to day basis.
I have a further quote from Mr. Schellenberger as reported in the same 1983 edition of Hansard :
-it is only in recent years that nothing has happened to petitions. Petitions are brought to the House by a Member of Parliament, are read to the Speaker and the Clerk who then deal with those petitions, and the next day they are either found to be in order or not. They then disappear in a room somewhere in the House of Commons.
They are never to be seen again. He continued:
That is not entirely the case, but it is pretty close.
This was 10 years ago when another member of the House was speaking to petitions. This matter has come and gone and come and gone. The reason we are addressing it today is that we hope Parliament, with a new and fresh face, will pay much more attention to the fact that petitions are a meaningful exercise by which citizens participate in the democratic traditions of the country. He continued:
For example, on the issue of capital punishment, many citizens of our nation believe this institution is not representing the wishes of the majority of the nation-
Regardless of whether we believe in capital punishment individually, do our laws represent the will of the nation? He went on:
-and their only means of bringing that to the attention of the House is through the presentation of petitions or Private Members' Bills. Neither of these two methods has been very successful in bringing about a change in the past, but at least the opportunity is there to bring a grievance forward.
I draw the attention of members to the fact that in 1981 Stan Schellenberger brought forward a private member's bill on petitions. We do have a fair amount of the groundwork already done.
In petitions we are talking about a much broader issue, of whether democracy is chained to tradition or whether it is anchored securely to the past or whether it is a living, breathing ideal that adapts to the changing times.
Very often whenever the concept of recall or a citizen's initiative or a referendum passes anyone's lips the retort that is heard is always Edmund Burke and his famous letter to the voters of Bristol. It is always said that members are elected to serve their constituents and if they do not like the way the member serves them, they can turf him or her out at the end of the session. In fact after Edmund Burke wrote that famous letter to the voters of Bristol in 1779, in the subsequent general election he was turfed.
His letter was in response to his constituents because they believed that the captured American revolutionary sailors were pirates. They would be brought to England and after about three years or so given a fair trial and hanged. He did not think this was right. Edmund Burke's position was that the American sailors should be treated as prisoners of war, tried by their peers and given a swift and fair trial under British tradition.
His compatriot at the time, Thomas Payne, broke with Edmund Burke on the basic philosophy that Edmund Burke was chained to tradition and to the past and he had made a virtue out of the fact that he was pledging himself in perpetuity in fidelity to the crown, to the Magna Carta, and that because the crown had given rights to the people, and in turn had pledged certain requirements to the crown, that these would follow through forever. Therefore Edmund Burke's understanding of democracy is built purely on tradition.
Thomas Payne was a contemporary of Thomas Jefferson and advised him in drafting the American declarations. His contention was that democracy lives and breathes in changes. In his book The Rights of Man , he wrote words to this effect: Every generation has the right and the responsibility to govern for its time and should not chain future generations to decisions of
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today than past generations have the right to chain today's generation to their decisions.
It is a very important consideration. He also wrote the phrase that many people will recognize: "The greatest tyranny of all is the presumption of ruling beyond the grave". When we talk about how we should change or should we change the way our Parliament works, the way we as a Parliament relate to the citizens of Canada, and whether empowering citizens is a good thing or a bad thing, it depends whether we have confidence in the choice that our voters made in getting us here in the first place.
We have to understand that we are not in 16th century or 12th century Britain. We live in a completely different world. We can focus the attention of every single person in this country on a single instance. Everybody understands now. Everybody can remember what they were doing at great moments in our history.
The example that always comes up is Ben Johnson. Everyone remembers when he won the hundred yard dash. Everybody in the country knew about it and was aware of it. If this were 16th century Europe it might take 30 years for the information to get around, but we knew it all around the world at the same instant in time.
We have to allow our democratic traditions to evolve and to change so they reflect the way communication works. We have a citizenry that is far more aware of what is going on and far more capable of being a part in providing a valid role in the daily organization and governance of our country. That is why petitions should be given the honour and diligence they deserve. Petitions are a constitutional right of Canadians and are an effective means, in principle, of putting forward concerns, opinions and perceived problems.
Although Canadians may use petitions as a means of putting their thoughts forward to Parliament, the use of petitions by citizens is in decline. The reasons should be examined. If the use of petitions is in decline, why do members suppose that is? It has to be because people do not believe it makes any difference. If a group circulates a petition until it gets a million signatures on it, if they work day and night, spend untold hours at it, it comes in here, is read to the House and then disappears, does that not feed the cynicism that all parliamentarians feel the citizens in common hold toward the institution of government?
If we are to build this bridge, this strength and this tie between the people who must go through some pretty difficult times because we are eventually going to have to live within our means, then the leadership to do so has to come from this House. It has to come from the fact that we as members of Parliament honour, respect and pay attention to the citizens of Canada whether we agree with what they say or not.
The voters whom we represent expect us to use our wisdom and our intelligence but they do not expect it to be a one way street. They expect it to be a two way street. They do not expect every single issue that comes before the people to be referred to referendum or to petition but they do expect us to listen and to pay attention to whatever they have to say and not just at election time.
Not everything we do or say can be envisioned ahead of time. However, we must give members credit, a lot of it is in the red book. But there are a lot of things that the government did not envision. It had no way of knowing they would have happened, could not have prepared for it so it could not be part of the mandate that gets any of us elected into the House. Therefore we have to be prepared between elections to listen and respond to what our citizens have to say.
The decline or the apathy in the use of petitions by Canadians is a symptom of a much bigger problem. It is the neglect of petitions by elected representatives. It is a microcosm of the alienation electors feel toward the political system.
At times between elections issues arise that were not dealt with during the campaign, as I said a little earlier. It is during these periods that citizens need the ability to put forward their opinions to the government. Democracy needs to be a two way street and petitions allow this exchange to take place with great effect.
Although in principle petitions seem a valuable way for Canadians to address their government and an effective means for government to gauge the mood of the nation, petitions have been pushed aside in recent years, their value left untapped. Therefore we cannot blame Canadians for becoming cynical with government when every time, time after time, they see their protests ignored. The neglect of petitions by legislatures leaves a bitter taste in the mouths of all those who demand a bigger stake in the democratic process. The formulation of a petition is guided by many rules and procedures and it is a painstaking process for organizers.
We have received a petition with well over a million signatures. Imagine the amount of effort that has to go into it and it should not be taken lightly. The fact that the government is able to dismiss a petition regardless of the number of signatures or the importance of the issue with a blanket response is really a slap in the face for both the signators and for democracy.
Governments must recognize what a great tool a petition can be as a means of putting forward effective legislation. By the use of some very simple procedural reform pertaining to petitions, governments will be able to effectively gauge the thoughts of citizens as well as allowing them a way to become involved in national issues.
For instance, issues such as abortion, capital punishment, et cetera have all been addressed by one petition or another. If the government were not so quick to dismiss the thoughts of citizens, it could use these petitions as a springboard from which to develop policy. If Canadians are to go to all the trouble of
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formulating a petition it is most likely a reflection of an attitude present in the nation on a particular issue. For instance, in 1975 a petition on abortion was presented to the House. This petition had over a million signatures. Recently we received a petition concerning the Young Offenders Act, most likely the largest petition ever brought to the House. It does not matter how big it was or how many people got involved in putting it together, it was dismissed with little or no effect, even though it perhaps recognized the attitude of the great majority of Canadians.
Petitions therefore could be and should be used as a tool of democracy. Petitions would tie the government closer to national attitudes and bring individual members, all of us, closer to our constituents. More important, it would allow Canadians as individuals back into the decision making process of their nation.
I stand here today confident that these small, simple procedural reforms to the use of petitions could become that very tool. There are many means by which the petition could be made more relevant. We would have to consider which petitions carry a particular weight because obviously not all petitions have the same substance. Petitions that do carry significant weight either because the same issue is presented over and over again or because one petition has an overwhelming number of signatures, must be considered and recognized in deciding what happens to them.
We can make a couple of procedural changes. I would draw the attention of members to the private members' bill that was introduced, Bill C-642 in 1980-81, for more definite attitudes and things that could be changed. One thing we might do is move that petitions, after being read in the House, be given to the pertinent committee for discussion and its merits reported back to Parliament. I recognize that the House procedures committee will be looking at petitions as part of a greater analysis.
Another possibility would be to allow petitions to be debated in the House. The government and each opposition party could then use a supply day to debate the petition. We know that if a petition came to the House we could use a supply day and could debate the petition. That is what we are doing right now where we have the opportunity to bring forward what is on our mind.
Unless we have the vehicle in place to ensure that the government does something about petitions then nothing is going to happen. We have to bring this forward in a fashion that brings all members of Parliament on side, recognizing the need to evolve our Parliament into a situation where it is not just the opposition saying we should pay attention to this. It has to be all of us, opposition and government together asking how we can make this institution work better?"
I understand at present the government is required to respond to a petition within 45 days. However, nothing states that the response has to be anything more than just a blanket statement with perhaps little relevance to the petition. It is in essence merely an acknowledgement that the petition was received.
At the very least there should be some mechanism in place to keep track of petitions that have been presented in the House in each session, the number of signatures and the topic of the petition. This clearing house would provide an effective way for legislators to keep abreast of the mood of the nation as well as providing a filing system to ensure that records are kept so that we can see if one particular issue comes up day after day after day.
Some people worry that petitions may be a way of allowing special interest groups easy access to the political process. However, I would argue that special interests have already kidnapped the national agenda and that some use of direct democracy is necessary to offset that and bring the majority of Canadians back into the game by allowing the majority of citizens a means of expressing their grievances and the knowledge that they will be addressed. I am encouraged that the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs is considering discussion of direct democracy issues, including petitions.
It is imperative that Parliament listens to citizens and that all citizens know Parliament cares about what they have to say.
