THE STANDING COMMITTEE ON RULES, PROCEDURES AND THE RIGHTS OF PARLIAMENT
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Tuesday, April 28, 2026
The Standing Committee on Rules, Procedures and the Rights of Parliament met with videoconference this day at 9:30 a.m. [ET], pursuant to rule 12-7(2)(a), for consideration of possible amendments to the Rules.
Senator Peter Harder (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Honourable senators, I wish to welcome all of the senators and reviewers across the country watching us on sencanada.ca. My name is Peter Harder. I’m the Chair of the Standing Committee on Rules, Procedures and the Rights of Parliament, and I would invite my colleagues to introduce themselves.
Senator Downe: Percy Downe, senator from Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.
Senator Yussuff: Hassan Yussuff, Ontario.
Senator Busson: Welcome, Bev Busson from British Columbia.
[Translation]
Senator Petitclerc: Good morning. Chantal Petitclerc from Quebec.
Senator Ringuette: Pierrette Ringuette from New Brunswick.
Senator Surette: Allister Surette from Nova Scotia.
[English]
The Chair: We begin with the possible inclusion of provisions in the Rules of the Senate relating to e-petitions.
We’re pleased to welcome representatives of the House of Commons administration today, Jean-Philippe Brochu, Clerk Assistant, House Proceedings, House of Commons; and Benoit Dicaire, Chief Information Officer, Digital Service and Real Property who has appeared before this committee on other studies. Welcome, and thank you for accepting our invitation to appear before this committee. I invite you to make your opening statements, after which we’ll open the floor to questions and hear from senators.
Jean-Philippe Brochu, Clerk Assistant, House Proceedings, House of Commons: Thank you for inviting us to appear to discuss the House of Commons e-petition system. Benoit Dicaire can answer any and all technological and cost-implementation questions you may have.
The establishment of an electronic petition system, referred to as e-petitions, was first examined by the Special Committee on the Modernization and Improvement of the Procedures of the House of Commons in 2003. The Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, commonly known as PROC, subsequently considered the matter as part of its 2005 study on parliamentary reform.
No further action was taken until the adoption of a private member’s motion, M-428 in 2014, and a subsequent study by PROC. The web-based process was established by PROC’s 33rd report and was launched in 2015. The report included a provision requiring the committee to review the system two years after its implementation.
[Translation]
It is worth noting that the committee worked closely with the House administration in the conceptual development of the process. This led to a report detailing what was expected of the system, including requirements related to personal information security as well as the retention and disposal of data. Mock-ups and demos were also presented to House of Commons Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs before the system was finalized.
In 2017, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs undertook a review of the system and recommended several improvements, including publishing the text of paper petitions on the House of Commons website as well as the government responses to them. They also recommended making the rules governing the electronic petition system permanent. Amendments to the system were adopted in 2018 and are reflected in the current Standing Order 36(2).
[English]
To begin an e-petition, a member of the public creates an account on the House of Commons petitions website and drafts their petition using a standardized template. This template helps petitioners structure the request in a way that’s more likely to comply with parliamentary rules before it reaches the Clerk of Petitions for review.
Before proceeding, the petitioner must secure at least five supporters and identify a member willing to authorize the petition’s publication. In the electronic process, the member plays an early role by accepting or refusing that request within 30 days. This authorization does not imply agreement with the petition’s content. It simply allows the process to move forward. The member’s initial authorization represents a first filter for frivolous texts.
Once authorized, the petition is reviewed by the Clerk of Petitions, and if it is admissible, the petition is translated, indexed and published on the website where it’s open for signature for the public for 30, 60, 90 or 120 days, as would have been selected by the petitioner at the beginning of the process.
The online platform serves as both the publication mechanism and a system for collecting and validating signatures. If an e‑petition gathers 500 valid signatures, the clerk issues a certificate of validity, available to the MP through their own internal portal, and the MP who authorized the publication may then present the petition to the House, or file it with the clerk in the same manner as he or she would do with a paper petition.
[Translation]
Only one e-petition with the same text may be open for signature at a time. All petitions are also indexed by keyword on the website. The government responses are also published on the website. Petitioners and signatories receive email updates at various stages of the process, including when a government response is tabled.
Overall, paper and e-petitions culminate in the same parliamentary act: presentation to the House. However, the e‑petition process is more standardized and more reliant on early procedural oversight and digital infrastructure. However, paper petitions remain more flexible but less structured and more dependent on manual process.
Of note, paper petitions continue to be more prevalent, accounting for approximately 70% to 80% of petitions presented to the House during each parliament. Over the past seven years, the petition with the highest number of signatures was an electronic petition in 2024 with 387,487 signatures, while the paper petition with the most signatures was presented in March 2026 with 157,057 signatures. Historically, however, some paper petitions have received significantly higher numbers. Lastly, it should be noted that from 2020 to 2024, an average of 981,824 signatures were collected per year through the e-petition system and around 1.2% of the signatures were rejected.
Thank you, Mr. Chair, for this opportunity to appear before the committee today. We would be pleased to answer your questions. I’m sure you have some.
Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you.
[English]
We have heard from our witnesses, and I open the floor up for questioning.
[Translation]
Senator Ringuette: Gentlemen, thank you for joining us today.
Obviously, my first question is on installation and operating costs and on the difference between paper petitions and electronic petitions, if possible.
Benoit Dicaire, Chief Information Officer, Digital Services and Real Property, House of Commons: Thank you for the question, senator.
When the committee adopted the principle, the Board of Internal Economy approved a funding request of $250,000 to implement the first phase of the system. There have been a few enhancement phases since then in which additional investments were made.
The original cost to develop the system for the scope established by the committee was $282,600. A portion of the costs was absorbed by the House Administration. These were implementation costs. This was limited to the guidelines established during the system’s design in collaboration with the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.
In 2018, certain improvements were recommended by that same committee. This implementation introduced different features. One of them concerned the duration for which a petition could remain open. Originally, a petition could remain open for only 120 days. The committee therefore proposed different durations: 30, 60, 90, or 120 days.
Various factors explained some of the requested improvements. There were minor adjustments to be made.
Members of Parliament did not appreciate being referred to as a “sponsor” and so the terminology and associated terms were changed. There were also certain improvements to the user experience. At that time, this cost $71,725, which was funded by the House Administration.
The same report also had a committee recommendation to examine how to streamline the paper petition process. Was there a possibility to standardize the management of electronic petitions in the same way as paper petitions, that is, digitizing the paper records so they would be accessible, archived and available to Canadians, especially since we were beginning to present government responses in electronic format? This wasn’t done immediately in 2019, but together with the House Administration, we had previously explored ways to enhance the system. In fact, today there are twice as many paper petitions as electronic ones, and the ratio remains roughly the same to this day.
Given that volume, digitizing the paper petitions cost $615,000, which was funded by the House Administration at the time. This covers the context of the implementation costs. To summarize, these costs, for all phases since the system was established amounted to $869,325.
As for operating costs, at the time, in the same original proposal that allocated $250,000 for implementation, we were allocated $197,000 for the system’s operating costs — to ensure we had staff in the procedure side and the Journals branch to administer the system, as well as technical staff to maintain it. Therefore, this budget was $197,000 in the original 2015 proposal.
Today, as we’re transforming the system, we’ve made a few changes. I will go into more detail about the costs. There’s approximately $124,000 for the technology side and $124,000 for the procedures side. Various environments have also been created, including production and development environments, which cost approximately $47,000. For the environments that support the system and serve as development environments, the cost is approximately $12,000. These are roughly the current operating costs.
Senator Ringuette: All in all, what are the operating costs? About $250,000?
Mr. Dicaire: About $300,000 in total.
Senator Ringuette: Okay.
[English]
Senator Busson: I’m curious about the process in the House of Commons. You say that, as the petitions go forward, people have to be certified that they are Canadian citizens or residents of Canada, and then their signatures have to be verified. How does that process take place, specifically for electronic e‑petitions? I’d also like your comment on whether or not the paper petitions or the electronic e-petitions are more efficient in that respect.
Mr. Brochu: I wouldn’t say one system is more efficient than the other. They’re really different.
I’ll start with paper petitions. The level of detail that is required from signatures is fairly low, which means that we require a signature, a name and an address. But the address could be just a postal code, or it could be a city and a province. We are pretty generous. The idea is not to restrict or limit the ability of Canadians to submit petitions. It’s quite the contrary, actually. The principle is that we want to expand it.
As for electronic petitions, it depends. The threshold and level of detail is not the same for the petitioner as it is for the signatories. The petitioner first needs to create an account on the website and needs to provide a phone number, an address and an email address as well, so that we can reach out to that individual. It doesn’t necessarily have to be someone living in Canada; it could be a Canadian living abroad. We’re not limiting that in that sense. Now, whether the person is truly Canadian or not, it’s also partly based on an honour system, but we have ways to verify that in formal processes, if you will.
For signatories, it’s probably easier for them to sign a petition, because they don’t need to provide all of that information. We do gather some technical data just to verify and ensure that they’re not robots trying to sign the petitions, but the level is fairly low there. We just want to ensure that we have real humans signing the petitions, and that’s pretty much it.
I think there was a second part of your question, sorry.
Senator Busson: I think you answered the second part before you answered the first part. As a small follow-up, in that respect, do you do any kind of oversight to check if there are any fraudulent signatories?
Mr. Brochu: For paper petitions, it’s almost impossible, because we don’t have any way to contact signatories. As I said, it could be a city and province, so it’s pretty much an honour system. But for electronic petitions, yes, we have safeguards in place. We have ways to track someone who would try to sign a petition multiple times. Those are flagged as suspect, and then we do a manual verification of those. That’s actually the most time-consuming part of the work, to go through all those suspect signatures.
Senator Busson: Thank you very much.
Senator Batters: Thanks very much, both of you, for coming here today and helping us understand this a bit better. When all the costs were being addressed in that earlier part here, I was listening through translation, so I want to make sure that I understand it clearly. With the amount you were saying to operate it, I think you were saying that was an ongoing basis. Is that a yearly amount, $250,000 to $300,000? Is that correct for an average yearly amount?
Mr. Dicaire: Thank you for the question. Yes, it is an annual amount. Most of it is staff supporting the system and a bit of it is around consumption costs, because the system is now hosted in the public cloud, so there are subscription costs tied to that, and a few of the security elements we didn’t talk about around protecting the system and the integrity and availability of the system.
Senator Batters: Right, okay. When you were talking about the $861,000 — I think I got that correct — that was kind of the initial lay out and the different phases that were brought in probably in the last 10 years or so, correct?
Mr. Dicaire: You are correct.
Senator Batters: Okay. And then adding the $250,000 or $300,000 to it.
I think I also heard you say that there are two times as many paper petitions as there are e-petitions. What is the average number of signatures — I know that the materials we were provided showed us — and I think you repeated this — that for e-petitions, there is an average of about 1 million signatures per year for the e-petitions that are filed in the House of Commons. What would be the average number of signatures per year for the paper petitions?
Mr. Brochu: I would need to get back to you on this. I would assume it’s much lower than that. We have many more paper petitions in absolute numbers, but in terms of signatures, the vast majority of those are electronic signatures on —
Senator Batters: That would be great if you could get back to the clerk on that.
The other part, when you were saying that you use the honour system, you have ways to verify if someone is a Canadian living abroad. How do you actually do that? We don’t have e-petitions here, but we certainly see email things where it’s pretty clear there are a lot of Americans who are sending these by bot systems that send these through change.org or whatever, these types of email systems. How do you actually verify that these are Canadians signing these e-petitions?
Mr. Dicaire: I can talk about some of the technological controls we have in place.
First, when a petitioner has to create an account to be able to create a petition, that account requires an email verification as the first very basic mechanism. We are sent that email, and we verify that email is valid.
Second, we implemented a CAPTCHA system, which is a system against bots, in 2022, because we were seeing an increase in activity trying to leverage or expose the system using bot systems, and AI is also making it complicated around that.
Third, as part of the Procedure and House Affairs Committee at the House, the original system, we put some technological measures in place to prevent staff from Parliament or the Government of Canada being able to submit petitions and respond to petitions. So IP addresses were blocked around that to avoid influence or a potential staffer of an MP or these types of scenarios. That was recommended at that time.
Because of that, we now have visibility around IP addresses that the petition is submitted from. Yet again, there is still a combination of the honour system, meaning the petitioner has to confirm that they’re a Canadian resident. The second is to choose the province that they are petitioning from. There are some elements here that could be improved.
Senator Batters: Isn’t that probably a drop-down menu that they can choose from? It’s not difficult. Also, with the email address, obviously, you can’t tell from that necessarily because it could be like gmail.com, or something like that.
Mr. Dicaire: That’s right.
Senator Batters: Thank you.
Mr. Brochu: May I add one element? Don’t forget that the member authorizing the publication on the web may also play an active role in that. They do have access to the contact information of the petitioner, and I assume that most of them would get in touch with the petitioner before everything is done. Before they provide their seal of approval, if I could say, there might be an exchange between the member and the petitioners themselves.
Senator Batters: But not those signing the petition. That would be hundreds of thousands of people.
Mr. Brochu: No.
Senator Batters: The petitioner, the person who set it up. Thank you.
[Translation]
Senator Youance: Thank you for joining us.
My question concerns data security and protection. The petitions website has an explanation about how data is collected and used. What policies govern the destruction of data? Where is the data stored and for how long? What steps do you take to prevent cyberattacks?
Mr. Dicaire: I’ll start, and my colleague can chime in.
Data collection is important when it comes to the signatories’ personal information, such as their name, city and so forth.
During the active period, the data is stored in the system but is not necessarily displayed on the website. We don’t display the scope of the data. The retention period is six months after the petition becomes inactive. Therefore, the petition is either certified and closed, or deleted. Six months later, the data is deleted by the procedures team using a technological process we have established.
If Parliament is dissolved — and upon every dissolution of Parliament, regardless of whether a petition is active or not — this data is purged. Regarding retention and archiving, if you look at Canadian petitions in the House of Commons on the petitions website, you will only see certain information that is public, specifically the number of signatories; only basic data drawn from this information is archived and maintained.
Regarding the technological control process, there are several components to this architecture. I’ll keep it at a high level to avoid compromising the system.
What’s important to know is that there are several mechanisms in place regarding what’s called — I don’t have the French term —
[English]
It is DDoS, which is distributed denial-of-service —
[Translation]
— which is really the concept where someone might want to make the website inaccessible by launching a cyberattack to prevent Canadians from signing a petition.
We also have Google’s CAPTCHA technology, which has been implemented and gives us access, without changing the customer experience . . . . There’s no box asking you to enter a number; it happens in the background. This helps prevent issues related to artificial intelligence and bots.
We also have encryption in place to secure the system. We have an access matrix. Therefore, administrators on my team who need to do this have a matrix of roles and responsibilities that has been developed to prevent certain issues, and my colleagues have access to this as well. There are very specific roles and responsibilities.
[English]
Senator Downe: Thank you for being here. I have a question about the difference between paper petitions and e-petitions. For paper petitions, you sign your name and your address, but you don’t have to give your email address, is that correct?
Mr. Brochu: That’s right.
Senator Downe: For an electronic petition, you give your name and email address. Do you give your physical address as well?
Mr. Brochu: You don’t need to give your physical address if you are a signatory. If you are a petitioner, so the person drafting the petition, then you would need to provide more contact information. But, yes, you’re right.
Senator Downe: Are those names and addresses made public?
Mr. Brochu: Actually, no. The only thing that is made available to the public is the name of the petitioner, the province and city. All the other information is never released to the public, and it’s not even released to the member authorizing the publication of the petition.
Thank you for the question, because it allows me an opportunity to provide more information about the privacy of data. That was one of the main concerns of the Procedure and House Affairs Committee in 2015. They didn’t want members of Parliament to have access to that set of information. They didn’t want anyone to be able to do data mining with that set of information. This is clearly stated in the PROC report.
As to signatories, they do need to provide their consent to the fact that we will potentially be using that contact information, and that will be stored on our servers for a certain period of time. This is stated on the website. There’s nothing hidden there, so there is informed consent provided.
Senator Downe: The MP doesn’t see the addresses or the emails, so they cannot verify them?
Mr. Brochu: Exactly, only the main petitioner.
Senator Downe: The main petitioner gets to see all the names and addresses?
Mr. Brochu: No. They don’t get to see any of it.
Senator Downe: How do they verify them?
Mr. Brochu: They don’t.
Senator Downe: I thought I heard earlier that verification —
Mr. Brochu: The Clerk of Petitions does have access to that information. There’s a restricted number of staff within the Journals branch and a few on Benoit’s team who have access to that data. It’s fairly limited, and we’re really protective of that. Those teams do have access to the set of data.
That’s why I said that verifying the suspect signatories is what takes the most time.
Senator Downe: I’d like to follow up on Senator Batters’ comment. I made a note as well that you have ways to “verify Canadian citizenship.” I only heard a technical explanation, checking IP addresses and so on.
How do you verify that all the names are Canadians? It goes back to your earlier comment that it’s on the honour system. It seems to me it’s an open season for foreign interference.
Mr. Brochu: It depends what the purpose and objective of the signatories are. In our sense, it’s not much different than paper petitions. When the system was put in place in 2015, they simply decided to expand the system that existed before, so there was no way to determine if someone was truly Canadian on a paper petition or if they were from Toronto. I guess, back then, Stephen Harper would have made it to the suspect list, but there was no way of knowing.
The idea was not to restrict or limit the number of people signing but maybe to allow more people to sign, and that’s why they created the e-petition system, not to limit but to expand.
Senator Downe: Great. Thank you.
My last question concerns the government’s response. You mentioned the government replies to some or all of these petitions?
Mr. Brochu: There’s an obligation as to the Standing Orders for the government to provide a written response 45 days after presentation of a petition in the House.
Senator Downe: You mentioned that response is sent by you or your people to everybody who signed it?
Mr. Brochu: Yes, and it’s available on the website too as soon as it is tabled in the House.
Senator Downe: What percentage of those emails would bounce back as not valid?
Mr. Brochu: That’s a good question. I don’t know.
Mr. Dicaire: I wouldn’t have that information offhand.
The Chair: If you could answer that and report the answer to the clerk, that would be helpful.
Mr. Brochu: Presumably, the number would be very low because when signatories first sign, they will receive an email where they need to confirm their signature is valid. I think, in the last stages of the petition process, we would have already filtered those cases.
Senator Downe: What’s the percentage of [Technical difficulties]?
Mr. Brochu: I don’t know.
The Chair: Again, if you could find that information and provide it to the clerk, that would be helpful.
Senator Yussuff: My question is to both witnesses. Thank you both for being here.
I’m trying to understand the annualized cost of maintaining the system. Could you send us something more detailed as to how many staff are required and what the annualized cost is for the House of Commons?
Mr. Dicaire: Of course, senator, we can send that.
It’s really two staff right now, one on the technical side and one on the procedural side. The one thing that I think would be beneficial for your study is that the House of Commons already had an ecosystem of systems, similar to Iris here, and those investments were sum costs.
If you were to build this without having anything, those costs would be higher than what we have. For example, when we moved the petition system to the cloud in 2023, we moved the full website of our Commons to the cloud as well. The incremental costs weren’t very significant because the investments were there.
Much of the integration that we have with Prism in our legislative system that allows our e-petition staff on the procedural side to manage the systems has been established for 20-some years. The integration part is less costly than having to build it yourself.
I don’t know the nature — I think your next panel might inform you about the nature of their ability to integrate and what type of costs that would entail. We will provide you with a high‑level estimation of what I’ve given you.
The Chair: Thank you.
Senator Yussuff: In the context of the frequent use of both paper petitions and e-petitions, what would you say is the annualized volume that you get in the House of Commons? Granted, you’ve got a lot of MPs, and we have fewer senators than MPs.
Mr. Brochu: In terms of the number of petitions, I’ll give you a number from the beginning of the Forty‑fifth Parliament, so roughly a year. We have had 733 paper petitions and 307 electronic petitions, roughly a little more than 1,000 petitions in the year combining those two. I don’t have the exact number for the signatures, but it’s about 1,000 petitions.
Senator Yussuff: In the context of quite a significant volume, are you able to tell us the groupings of the issues, or is it way too broad to summarize in any way?
Mr. Brochu: It would be hard. I know we can get that information, and it’s actually available, I believe, on the e‑petition website. The most popular topics should be listed there.
Senator Yussuff: Thank you.
Senator Burey: Thank you for being here. I have a few questions.
Do you have any way of assessing engagement? Do you send out surveys to ask how you are doing in terms of the process?
Do you have any disaggregated data in terms of who is accessing the system? Do we just have e-petitions for a certain sector of the population, or is it across, in which we would want engagement of the whole population?
Mr. Brochu: In answer to your second question, we don’t have demographic data, if you will —
Senator Burey: Postal code data?
Mr. Brochu: — about who is accessing the system. We are not tracking that.
Senator Burey: The postal code would give you —
Mr. Brochu: Postal code, province, yes.
Senator Burey: — a lot of the socio-demographic data. We knew that from the pandemic. You are not looking at that at all to see who is using the system?
Mr. Brochu: No, and the same thing for assessing engagement. We don’t send out surveys. We do interact with petitioners and signatories, and it’s actually a big part of our work. We get a sense of what the main complaints are. We don’t get praises, but we do get complaints. We don’t send out surveys.
Senator Burey: Moving on to the approval process, can you tell us more about that process? Is there a committee that’s formed? How do you decide that this petition will go forward?
Mr. Brochu: Do you mean for electronic petitions? Because the process is different for paper petitions.
Senator Burey: If we have time, I would like you to talk about both.
Mr. Brochu: During the approval process, as I said, the main petitioner needs to receive support from five of his or her friends first, and then the text is sent to a member of Parliament, who will need to authorize publication on the web.
Then there is a first review by procedural staff at the House. They want to ensure the text is correct as to form and content. There is a body of precedence and rules that are in our guides and main procedural authorities.
Then the signatures are gathered. For electronic petitions, if the petition reaches the threshold of 500 signatures, then it receives a certificate and can be presented in the House.
For paper petitions, it’s a bit more straightforward. Someone would gather 25 signatures, provide a paper copy of the petition to a member of Parliament, and that member would send it to the Clerk of Petitions for certification. Then the analysis of the text, content and form is done. If it follows the rules and if we have 25 valid signatures, then we issue a certificate and it can be presented in the House.
Senator Burey: If you get everything right, then both of those systems say your petition will go forward? There is no committee that says you can’t go ahead?
Mr. Brochu: No.
Senator Burey: Okay. Thank you.
[Translation]
Senator Petitclerc: Thank you all for being here today. I have a few quick questions.
My first one — and I think I’ve heard two other people mention this as well — is this: When we think about human resources, what kind of team or what size of team is needed to handle all the processes, such as text recognition, compliance, criteria, occasional rejections, translation and data layout? How many people does that represent in terms of human resources and staffing?
Mr. Brochu: I’ll start with the staff in the Procedure Office. As my colleague mentioned, one person is always assigned to this task on a full-time basis.
This is an ongoing support function. People can submit petitions during the summer or the holiday season. Some signature periods end on December 25. We need at least one professional to manage this internally.
The main tasks are, as you pointed out and articulated so clearly, managing translation, indexing and publication. That’s a small part of the work. Surprisingly, the biggest part is interacting with the public. A huge number of people write to us. Signatures also have to be verified. Sometimes we’re very busy, and the task is handled by several staff members, and other times, fewer people are needed. On average, one person is dedicated solely to electronic petitions.
Before 2015, we had a Clerk of Petitions who only handled paper petitions. I would estimate that that accounted for half of their workload. It was much simpler to manage paper petitions back then. The Clerk of Petitions also handles private members’ bills here and their job is therefore two-fold, to give you an idea of the scope of the task.
That means there’s one full-time staff member on the procedures side.
Mr. Dicaire: Essentially, the technical side has one person, but as I mentioned, Senator Petitclerc, there are shared systems that staff members are already supporting. We need to consider that we built the system on top of an existing ecosystem, so there are staff members who aren’t necessarily included in the head count. One person for the petition system handles any issues that may arise and manages the codes and everything related to updating codes, compliance and so forth.
Senator Petitclerc: I think that requiring 25 signatures for paper petitions, as opposed to the 500 signatures required for electronic petitions, is still a big difference. What’s the reason for that? How was that decision made?
Mr. Brochu: We would have to go back to 2015 and ask the members who served on the Procedure Committee. My theory, which is just an assumption, is that it’s much easier to collect electronic signatures and as such, the threshold was set higher.
Senator Petitclerc: Does that mean the two requirements were considered equivalent in the end?
Mr. Brochu: Yes.
Mr. Dicaire: To assist you, Senator Petitclerc, in the 2018 report, this question came up again in committee, so there is information to explain why it was not amended.
Senator Petitclerc: Okay.
Mr. Dicaire: The committee therefore repositioned itself by asking, “Should we make changes and harmonize, or not?” They decided to maintain the status quo.
Senator Petitclerc: They stayed that way. Thank you.
Senator Surette: My question is twofold.
First, we have figures here showing the number of e-petitions that gathered 500 signatures. Do you have any idea how many petitions started with just five people and how many go on to garner 500 signatures?
In the figures, you mentioned 1,000; that is the number of petitions that gathered 500 signatures, isn’t it?
Mr. Dicaire: You need 500 signatures for a petition to reach the certification stage —we could provide you with the figures — and it requires at least five to 10 people to support it. We can give you the breakdown of the five to 10 requirements. Most petitioners ask for only five people, but for some time now, some 202 have requested up to 10 people, meaning they’ve asked for more support. It really is up to the person creating the petition to decide whether to ask for five, six, seven, eight, nine or 10. We have the breakdown, but I don’t know —
Senator Surette: I was actually wondering how many gathered 500 signatures.
Mr. Brochu: On average, over the past 10 years, 586 electronic petitions have been submitted each year. About 30% reach the certification stage, which amounts to 177.
Senator Surette: The second part of my question concerns the effectiveness of these petitions.
If I understand correctly, all petitions that garner 500 signatures receive a response from the government. Do you know how many of them are debated in the House of Commons?
Mr. Brochu: There is currently no mechanism in place to consider a petition that reaches a certain threshold. As such, it’s really more of a policy issue. I can’t really say what happens once the petition has been submitted and the government has issued its response.
Senator Surette: Yes, since I imagine there might be different ways of doing things, depending on whether the petition concerns a bill or a general issue, right?
Mr. Brochu: Yes. It can also depend on the subject of the petition and what is being requested.
[English]
Senator K. Wells: I have a number of questions. I’ll see how many I can get through. Can you speak to the e-petitions in particular and maybe what you’ve heard about the value to members of Parliament and to the House of Commons in general in terms of engaging Canadians and raising awareness around specific issues that matter to Canadians?
Mr. Brochu: I think members are really proud to be authorizing or presenting petitions in the House. Petitioning Parliament is a constitutional right, so I think that tells us a lot. I don’t know if I can expand on it more than that, but typically we don’t see a lot of members refusing to present or support a petition. I guess it might happen, but it’s not frequent.
Mr. Dicaire: Maybe some clarity around that is the petitioner has to select the member of Parliament that they want to support. If the member doesn’t support it, it goes back to the petitioner and they can solicit another member up to five times.
Senator K. Wells: Up to five times. That’s great to know.
Connected to that, is there a limit on the number of petitions that can be — for lack of a better word — sponsored by an MP?
Mr. Brochu: There is no limit in that sense. There’s a limit on the number of petitions a petitioner may submit, but a member can authorize the publication of as many as they receive.
Senator K. Wells: Great. Have there been any concerns raised regarding e-petitions by the Privacy Commissioner?
Mr. Brochu: To my knowledge, no.
Senator K. Wells: You’re doing an excellent job in terms of managing and protecting the data.
The Chair: You’re doing an excellent job.
Mr. Brochu: Thank you, chair. Hopefully, they are not listening this morning. We don’t want to give him ideas.
Mr. Dicaire: We have an internal audit function that on a cyclical basis will look at how the system is configured; is there any way, shape or form to improve? There were a few recommendations around role-based access that we are currently working on, and it’s really around the internal process of managing the system.
Senator K. Wells: You mentioned the value to members of Parliament and engaging Canadians. Do you have a sense of how your e-petition process system is viewed by other Parliaments around the world?
Mr. Dicaire: We have had a few requests from other legislatures to copy the system; Ontario was one of them and British Columbia has looked at it. I can speak around those requests that are coming to us to learn more, similar to what you are doing today.
Senator K. Wells: Sounds like you have a good model.
Senator Ringuette: I have a quick question. Technically, could the Senate be an add-on feature to your current system? If so, at what cost, approximately?
Mr. Dicaire: That is a very difficult question to answer. We would have to evaluate the concept because, like I said, it is a different ecosystem of applications.
I can speak about the Ontario example because the Ontario Legislature was very interested a few years ago; I think it was 2017 or 2016. Don’t quote me on that one, but around that period, we seriously looked at the evaluation of using some of our systems and replicating that in their environment.
There are details around that study. If you want, if it would be beneficial for the study, we could potentially provide some information in a confidential manner. It would have to be in a confidential manner because there are parameters that I don’t own from the Ontario Legislature
Senator Batters: You indicated earlier that in the first year of this Parliament there have so far been 733 paper petitions and 307 e-petitions.
You may not have this knowledge with you, but if you could let our committee clerk know how many signatures total for each of those. What is the total of the e-petition signatures to date and what is the total, approximately, of the paper petitions to date?
Mr. Brochu: I don’t have the breakdown between the two, but it’s about what Benoit points to, a number of one million in total signatures.
Mr. Dicaire: Since October 2025, the number I have in front of me is about one million unique signatories.
Senator Batters: And that’s between the two, though?
Mr. Dicaire: Yes.
Senator Batters: I’m curious to know what the increased amount is of e-petitions, signatures, as compared to paper petitions.
Mr. Dicaire: You were asking specifically, just to clarify, the amount of unique signatories in the e-petition system versus the paper?
Senator Batters: Yes, for this past year of Parliament.
Another issue that you were discussing with Senator Downe was about foreign interference. I would think that, yes, obviously with paper petitions, that’s possible too. However, with a paper petition, you actually do have to sign it in Canada.
You may be a foreign resident or something like that, but you are signing it in Canada. It’s not just online to be able to access via the internet, right?
Mr. Brochu: I’m not sure anyone from outside Canada or anyone could not sign.
Senator Batters: No, certainly they can. It’s just probably less likely that they would be going somewhere and filling out a paper petition and getting their friends, et cetera, to do that with a paper petition than easily emailing thousands of their friends abroad to be able to do that, correct?
Mr. Dicaire: The e-petition system allows a Canadian citizen residing abroad to participate as long as they —
Senator Batters: It says as long as you can choose a province out of a drop-down menu and check a little box that says you’re doing that. But if you’re inclined to foreign interference, you’re probably not following those rules.
As well, dealing with the analyzing data part of it that Senator Burey was asking about, I would imagine that doing any sort of analysis by postal code or something like that would be extremely expensive and much beyond the financial capabilities of the House of Commons, right?
It’s quite a different thing to have the federal Department of Health or something like that analyze data for COVID. But this would be quite an expensive exercise, I would expect, right?
Mr. Dicaire: It is, and it wasn’t the intent when we built the system to look at that.
There are a variety of systems that we have with a variety of security postures. I will tell you that electronic voting has a completely different posture from a security perspective than e‑petitions. E-petition was based on trying to emulate what we had in paper. And the Procedure and House Affairs Committee really wanted to focus on accessibility of that service for Canadians, so less around restricting and putting rules in place around that.
Senator Batters: Thank you.
The Chair: As chair, I’ll use my prerogative to ask a question and then go back to the list.
When our staff — our analysts and clerk — contacted the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security to ask them as a potential witness on the security issues around this, they said you were the better experts, so I compliment you for having that reputation.
Going back to some of the security issues that we’ve talked about, have you experienced any cyberattacks on the website dealing with e-petitions? If so, how do you deal with them? What kind of threat level do you see in this system?
Mr. Dicaire: I’ll try to answer the best I can with the information I can share in public.
Yes, there are always attacks. Parliament is a prime target for attacks. We have several hundred million attempts every year. We work in partnership with our colleagues at Senate IT and our friends from a security perspective. It’s a broader statement than just targeting the e-petition system.
But our public website, which e-petition is a component of, is something that is a high-value target.
The mechanisms that we have in place around resilience, availability and those different concepts have been put in place to protect the broader systems and not specifically the e-petition system.
The Chair: The last questions will go to Senators Wells and Yussuff. I’ll ask you both to pose your question and give the panel the opportunity to respond to both before we end our time.
Senator K. Wells: Do you have a sense of what the typical length of a response from a government is when it’s certified and then shared? As you said, you post those on the website.
In terms of public engagement, do you have a sense of, with e‑petitions, how they are perceived by media? It seems from my limited experience that sometimes media will pick up on a particular story of an e-petition and do further work around investigating that particular issue.
To reiterate the importance of Senator Ringuette’s comments around the ability, feasibility and cost analysis of co-hosting a Senate-based e-petition on the existing House of Commons system, I think that’s something we are going to want to look at very closely. Thank you.
Mr. Brochu: I can begin with the typical length of a government response, roughly a couple of pages, between one and three depending on the topic, I guess. It’s really hard to gauge. If you’re interested, they’re all available publicly on the website.
In terms of public engagement, you are right. Typically, you would see media picking up on those popular topics and covering those issues, sometimes interviewing the members authorizing the petition. That’s pretty much it, I would say.
We do look at news reports every day, but they are not all over the news. Only when a petition goes viral, then it’s part of the public or it becomes part of the public news, 45 days to provide a government response. And I think the last question was about co‑hosting, or the comment was about co-hosting.
Mr. Dicaire: As the study of your committee progresses, and if this is of interest, we can look at it in collaboration with the Senate Administration. For now, I think it would be an exercise of significant length. I will let the study continue.
If there is something that makes sense, for now we will share —
The Chair: We can e-petition you.
Mr. Dicaire: Yes, that’s it. We can happily share at least preliminary information of the Ontario study that was done a few years back to at least give you an indicator.
The Chair: Thank you. Colleagues, that brings us to the conclusion of this panel. On your behalf, I want to thank our witnesses for helping us better understand the issues.
I’d now like to welcome our second panel. We have with us Maxime Fortin, who, as you know, is the Clerk Assistant and Director, Chamber Operations and Procedure Office, or COPO; and David Vatcher, Chief Information Officer, Information Services Directorate, or ISD. Thank you for accepting our invitation to appear.
You’ve had the benefit of the first panel, so I suspect you can understand the nature of the questioning, and I would invite you to make your opening statement, followed by questions from our colleagues.
Maxime Fortin, Clerk Assistant and Director, Chamber Operations and Procedure Office, Senate of Canada: Thank you, honourable senators, for inviting us to appear today. To begin, I would like to recall that in the Senate, there are essentially two types of petitions: those intended to initiate a private bill and those aimed at drawing attention to an injustice or requesting some form of redress. My remarks focus primarily on this second type.
[Translation]
In reality, petitions are rarely used in the Senate. Since the start of the 42nd Parliament, which is almost 10 years, there have been only 13. Over the past two Parliaments, these petitions have focused primarily on a very limited number of topics, often related to specific bills and repeatedly filed on the same issues. For example, former Senator Mégie has tabled five petitions in support of her public interest bill over the past two years.
According to the Rules, the Senate accepts only written petitions. They must be sponsored by a senator and concern matters within federal jurisdiction, and more specifically within the Senate’s jurisdiction.
[English]
It’s also important to note that the Senate Administration currently doesn’t carry out any systematic tracking of the number of signatures. Signatures are neither verified nor certified, and there’s no quantitative threshold with procedural effect.
So, unlike the House of Commons, a petition tabled in the Senate does not trigger any automatic mechanism or procedural action. Specifically, the tabling of a petition does not result in a mandatory debate, an automatic referral to a committee or an obligation for the government to respond.
Petitions frequently urge the government to take action when we look at the House of Commons system. However, as clearly stated in Senate Procedure in Practice, the Senate cannot compel the government to act. Petitions should, therefore, in principle seek a solution that the Senate itself can provide, since they have no binding effect on the government.
[Translation]
This is where there’s a significant difference with the House of Commons.
In the House, e-petitions are widely used to call for direct government action. They are based on a clear accountability link between the elected House and the government, and they entail a formal obligation to respond within a specific time frame.
This institutional link does not exist in the same way in the Senate. There is therefore a real risk that the introduction of electronic petitions will create expectations in the Canadian public that the Senate, by its very nature, cannot meet, especially when it comes to securing concrete government action.
[English]
If the objective is to better understand the issues facing Canadians, it should be recalled that the Senate already has a very effective tool to do so. Committees can undertake in-depth studies, hear witnesses, receive written briefs and make detailed recommendations to the government. When committees report, they may formally request a government response, which constitutes a structured and recognized mechanism that exists in our Rules.
In many respects, this approach promotes more qualitative citizen participation based on analysis, expertise and dialogue, rather than on the sheer number of signatures.
[Translation]
If the goal is to modernize ways to engage with the public, there are other avenues already, or new ones could be developed, without formally establishing an electronic petition system. For example, expanded calls for written submissions to committees, targeted consultations such as round tables, town hall meetings or public hearings held outside Ottawa. Questionnaires or surveys related to specific committee mandates or issues under consideration in the Senate could be implemented fairly easily.
[English]
Finally, it should not be forgotten that the House of Commons already operates a very active electronic petitions system, like you just heard. A parallel system in the Senate could create duplication, split signatures and, paradoxically, reduce the impact of certain citizen mobilizations. In 2011, a similar risk was identified in the House of Lords in the U.K., which led them to conclude it was not necessary to establish their own electronic petition system.
Finally, it may also be useful to situate this reflection within the current budgetary context. The establishment and maintenance of an electronic petition system would necessarily entail additional financial investments and use of administration resources. Any budgetary and resource considerations would require the approval of the Standing Senate Committee on Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration, or CIBA, but that said, in this context, the question of the real value added of such a tool compared to the mechanisms already in place in the Senate deserves careful examination.
[Translation]
I’ll stop here for now, but I’ll be happy to answer your questions after my colleague’s remarks.
[English]
The Chair: Thank you.
David Vatcher, Chief Information Officer, Information Services Directorate, Senate of Canada: Thank you, Mr. Chair and good morning, senators. Thank you for allowing me to appear this morning. I’ll keep my remarks brief.
It is, of course, not up to me to comment on the reasons or the decision that may or may not lead to the establishment of an electronic petition system in the Senate. However, if such a decision were to be made, it would undoubtedly need to go through the Internal Economy Committee, or CIBA, which determines my mandate and budget and which currently is undergoing an efficiency review.
If that were the case, still, an initial business needs analysis would be conducted, and alternatives would be examined and presented, along with orders of magnitude of cost and deadlines for each.
These alternatives could include the possibility of adapting what the House has already created in the Senate; the evaluation of readily available commercial solutions, if possible; and the possibility of developing our own internal solution. Further, we would need to analyze the integration into our legislative system, Iris.
Any solution to be deployed would, of course, need to respect accessibility requirements and strict cybersecurity protections. ISD remains attentive to Senate needs and will be ready to provide advice at the appropriate time should such a request be made. Thank you.
The Chair: Colleagues, let’s open it up for questions.
Senator Batters: Thank you very much for being here, and welcome back, Ms. Fortin, to the Rules Committee. Currently, the Senate, although it looks like from the material provided, has only had just a very few number of petitions in the last several years, but you were indicating that the Senate Administration does not track the number of signatures for that and that they don’t verify signatures. I have a couple of questions on that.
First of all, it’s been a few weeks now, or a month, maybe, since it’s been known that our Rules Committee was going to look at this question. Did the Senate Administration go back at all to look at this — they don’t have very many to look at. It says here that people can go to look at the official petitions, I guess in person or something like that, but could you potentially just even go back to look at those, over the last several years, to let us know, as we do this study, what sort of take-up there was on these few petitions that did exist in the last several years? With respect to the signatures, there’s no verification of signatures, but what information is actually required to be submitted on a Senate petition currently? Just name, city, province, address, email? What sort of information is required?
Ms. Fortin: We haven’t gone back to look at the 13 petitions that we received in the past 10 years, but it’s definitely an exercise that we could do. We could come back to the committee with the topics. I think you already have the topics, but the number of signatures. This is an exercise that we can do. We would need to manually count the signatures, but given the small number, as you said, it’s certainly doable.
In terms of what needs to be included in a petition, other than in a written format, the Rules don’t specify any requirements for written signatures. We rely on the Senate Procedure in Practice with some guidelines or what we’ve seen in the past with petitions. What we have in there is the full printed name and then the signature and the address of the petitioners.
Senator Batters: Thank you. You had made a comment when you were talking about e-petitions and saying that committees can already undertake studies and that type of thing. I would say that e-petitions are probably more akin to a senator getting up in Question Period, because that’s where you are actually seeking accountability from the government on a daily basis when the Senate is sitting.
Mr. Vatcher, just so we have some baseline here — and the Senate is, obviously, a considerably smaller institution than the House of Commons — with your Senate IT department, how many full-time equivalents, or FTEs, do you have in your department right now, and what is the annual budget currently for the Senate IT department that you are the head of?
You mentioned an efficiency review. Is there a specific percentage that you are to try to reduce your budget by, or how does that work? Is it just an ad hoc basis?
Mr. Vatcher: Thank you for your question.
Currently, ISD holds 51 FTEs. I can break it down into sectors, if you wish.
Senator Batters: No, that’s okay.
Mr. Vatcher: We have an operating budget for 2025-26 of $10.6 million. The actual spending will be closer to $10.3 million.
Senator Batters: Now, from my time on Standing Committee on Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration, or CIBA — and that was several years ago — I think that that has gone up considerably in the last several years; am I correct?
Mr. Vatcher: You are correct, senator.
Senator Batters: Maybe five years ago or so was it more like 30 people in that department, and now it’s 51? What was the annual budget, say, five years ago or so?
Mr. Vatcher: I’m sorry. I don’t have the budget from five years ago in front of me, but I do agree with you that our budgets have gone up. It’s difficult for us to remain with the same budgetary amounts when equipment tests have doubled and tripled in some cases and when we have new requirements that we need to meet at the Senate, including the pre-testing of witnesses and the holding of hybrid meetings, such as this one — well, this one is all present, but all meetings are hybrid if we need them —
Senator Batters: We are not allowed to have the committee meet hybrid.
Mr. Vatcher: So we have greater responsibilities, and our budgets and team have grown to answer those.
Senator Batters: What about that efficiency review question? Is there a specific percentage you’re supposed to seek to reduce your budget by, or how does that work?
Mr. Vatcher: I’m not sure if that is public information at this point, senator, so I hesitate to call it out.
Senator Batters: Could you clarify and provide us the information if you are allowed to give it?
Mr. Vatcher: We’ve been asked to seek a reduction by a certain percentage. Unfortunately, I’m unsure if I can discuss this publicly, as we’re meeting today, actually, at the Subcommittee on Senate Estimates and Committee Budgets, or SEBS, to present those —
Senator Batters: No, that’s why I asked you to clarify if you are able to give that information, and if you are able to give it to us, then you can provide it to the committee clerk.
Mr. Vatcher: I’d be happy to do that once I’m allowed to do that.
Senator K. Wells: My first question is to our clerk.
From your understanding, is there a legislative right to petition the Senate in the same way that there is with the House of Commons?
Ms. Fortin: It is something that has been in our Rules for quite a long time, so, yes, citizens can petition the Senate as well as the House of Commons. The main difference is that it has to be addressed specifically to the Senate; whereas, for the House of Commons, it can be addressed to the government or to a specific member of Parliament, for example. That would be the main difference that I would highlight.
Senator K. Wells: There is not a Senate sponsor, then, that has to be designated — like there is in the House of Commons — for a petitioner to find a willing sponsor to take the petition on?
Ms. Fortin: Ahead of time, no, but if a petitioner wants their petition tabled in the Senate, then they do need a senator to do that for them.
Senator K. Wells: It is, sort of, after the fact and not right from the beginning?
Ms. Fortin: It can be either/or. It can be done from the beginning or later on, but we’re not involved before a petition is ready to be tabled. For some petitions, maybe there’s a senator involved from the beginning or even in finding petitioners to sponsor something supporting their bill, for example, but we’re not part of that process.
Senator K. Wells: In a hypothetical situation, as a senator today, I could go and create a petition? There’s no template or format or particular rules for me to have to follow to be able to have that certified and presented to the Senate?
Ms. Fortin: There’s no template. There are specific guidelines that we would normally give to a senator who asks questions about petitions. They’re in Senate Procedure in Practice, and we will usually send the few bullets that we have, but other than that, no.
Senator K. Wells: You mentioned how the Senate has limitations in comparison to the House of Commons, and I think, for example, of Senate public bills. In terms of petitions, as they currently exist, are there any limitations? For example, a petition could not be supported if it has implications on government spending? I’m just trying to get a sense of where we are now and what we might want to consider if we’re putting limitations on e‑petitions that actually fall within the scope and the purview of the Senate as opposed to the House of Commons.
Ms. Fortin: Currently, there’s no procedural action, or there’s nothing that follows the tabling of a petition, so there are no specific requirements.
The petition has to seek a remedy that the Senate can offer, so in the example that you’re giving, if the petition is asking for the government to spend money, for example, this is not a remedy that the Senate can offer. Given that there are no procedural follow-ups, there’s not much that we can do.
If there are no procedural follow-ups, there are no, for example, grounds for a point of order to be raised on a petition. It’s almost the equivalent of a document being tabled. Currently, there are no requirements because there are no follow-ups. If there are certain follow-ups, then I would say they would have to follow the Rules that we currently have, or our Rules would need to be adapted to address that.
Senator Downe: Thank you for your presentations this morning. I want to follow up on that last point.
I suspect the reason that the Senate Rules on petitions are what they are — and I was not involved in them before, but I’m making an assumption here — is because the senators of the day understood that by having a petition — either written or now e‑petitions — they were grafting onto the Senate something that was best left to the House of Commons for the very reasons you outlined. There’s no remedy that can come from the Senate. There’s no government response that can come from the Senate. It’s under false pretenses that somebody is presenting a petition, hoping to have any action from the government. That’s simply not going to happen.
Did I understand your testimony correctly on that point?
Ms. Fortin: Yes.
Senator Downe: I want to clarify your testimony again. The same conclusion was reached in the House of Lords in the United Kingdom for the same reason and rationale. Is that correct?
Ms. Fortin: It was one of the reasons, yes.
Senator Downe: In addition to those concerns, I’ve come to the personal conclusion after reading the documents and hearing the witnesses that we had earlier that this is best left to the House of Commons. In addition to that, some of my colleagues have raised the additional cost, and even if we piggyback with the House of Commons, there will be a cost to the Senate.
Senator Batters mentioned her time on CIBA; I used to be on CIBA as well. I noticed the cost of the Senate in the last 10 years has gone up 60%. I fully understand why the ISD directorate has to increase their budget and staff, given what is going on with technology and the attacks we’re under and so on, but at the same time, we have to find savings and not new expenditures. That’s another reason I have a concern about this.
If you were to take a ballpark guess, what would be the additional cost to the Senate for e-petitions?
Mr. Vatcher: We heard earlier that the House invested close to $870,000 throughout and has an annual operating cost of $250,000 to $300,000 a year. I wish I had a better understanding of precise needs and how we could address those. We may be able to do some things at the Senate because the Senate works differently from the House, of course. If we piggybacked off their system, we’d have to rewrite half of the stuff anyways because our operations are so different. We have a much smaller team, so I really struggle to give you an amount, senator; I don’t want to mislead you.
Senator Downe: I understand, thank you.
Senator Busson: Just to review what some of my colleagues were saying, usually technology is employed to resolve either a procedural problem or make a process more efficient or more cost-effective.
Is there an administrative issue that having an e-petition might solve? Is there a problem here that we need to solve, or is this issue just more or less a way of making it easier for people to petition if we adopt an e-petition?
Mr. Vatcher: Thank you for your question, senator. First off, from what I understand, Ms. Fortin was saying the number of petitions at the Senate is so low that I would personally hesitate, in this context, to make a massive investment to create a system that could handle a few petitions over the course of 10 years. I understand that the number of petitions could grow. I’m not debating that, but of course, a cost-benefit analysis would need to be done to ensure that we’re making the right decision.
I don’t want to stifle or reduce this institution’s desire to reach out to Canadians and have Canadians reach out to it, but I would tread carefully, given the current economic situation.
Senator Busson: Thank you. I suspected that’s what you might say. Do you have a comment, Ms. Fortin?
Ms. Fortin: To add to what David was saying and repeating numbers you just heard, from the beginning of the Forty‑fifth Parliament, the House of Commons received 733 paper petitions, not electronic ones. We received one. Comparing apples to apples, the number is much higher in the House of Commons in terms of petitions.
Senator Busson: Thank you.
Senator Ringuette: Over the last 10 years, we’ve received 13 paper petitions. Of those 13, 4 were for the same Bill S-280, Senator Mégie’s bill. In essence, we’re looking at one petition per year.
Mr. Vatcher, you’re saying it would be very hard for us to entertain co-hosting with the House of Commons because the two systems operate differently. Technically, that is a major barrier.
The other major barrier I see — and that you correctly identified, Ms. Fortin — is that the Senate cannot compel government. I suspect that 85% to 95% of the petitions, whether electronic or paper, in the House of Commons deal with asking the government to do something.
Am I wrong in the statement I just made? I need to have a question.
Mr. Vatcher: I don’t believe you’re wrong. I believe that either piggybacking, as we say, or replicating what the House does would come at substantial cost to the Senate, but I haven’t performed an analysis yet. That’s what I’m guessing. I’m not saying it’s impossible, and I don’t know what the Senate will decide to do in the future regarding public outreach and all of that.
If you change your Rules and a bunch of petitions come in, or something similar, then I’m sure we’ll be able to look at it. However, given the present state — as you mentioned, 13 over 10 years, 4 of which were for the same bill — I would hesitate to make a massive investment for one petition a year.
Senator Petitclerc: Thank you for being here. Senator Ringuette touched on a little bit of what I wanted to ask, but maybe, Mr. Vatcher, you can dive in a little more. You mentioned if this was something to explore that CIBA would need to do a needs analysis. Did I hear that correctly? I want to understand what that would involve and include, costs probably, and consultation?
[Translation]
Mr. Vatcher: Thank you for the question, senator.
I get my budgets and my mandate from the Internal Economy Committee. If a decision were made for us to design such a system, the first thing I would do would be to conduct a needs analysis to ensure that whatever we deliver meets the needs of the Senate and not those of the House. Their needs are different from ours, even if they may be similar.
It’s also important to understand that our legislative system, Iris, is independent and distinct from the House’s system, which is known as Prism and is much larger and incorporates far more features than ours. This is based on decisions made in the past.
I’m by no means opposed to the introduction of such a system, but the first thing I would do is provide the Internal Economy Committee with the results of an analysis presenting several options, which would include information on costs, delivery time and so forth.
Senator Petitclerc: What elements would be included in this analysis? The cost, I suppose? It’s hard to assess needs. I don’t know if you have any specific details, such as a list. How would you structure this analysis?
Mr. Vatcher: One of the challenges we face in IT when talking with our colleagues and clients is accurately identifying their needs. In my experience, all too often, a client will tell me they need an iPad and present me with a solution to a problem that might not be best addressed by an iPad. I listen to the client and look at the Senate’s internal procedures, which differ from those of the House.
Accordingly, if my other colleagues and clients tell me, “Here’s how we’d do it,” I can gain a better understanding of the client’s needs, and, drawing on my technical expertise, I can identify potential options along with their costs. The Senate can then make a choice based on its needs.
Senator Petitclerc: Thank you.
[English]
Senator Yussuff: Thank you for being here.
I’m sure if you’re perplexed as to the problem we’re trying to solve, I’m equally perplexed, given the history that has been provided to us in terms of the insignificant number of petitions that have been brought forward by senators, compared to the number of senators in the chamber.
We relate very differently to the House of Commons because we don’t have a constituency; we are not elected. The members of Parliament, of course, interact with their constituents on a regular basis. It is a large part of that. They have to get elected, so they stay in touch.
The point you made earlier was that the government does react to petitions because it’s the elected place. We don’t have that capacity here in terms of the government responding to a petition going forward.
If there were petitions here, how would you go about certifying? You’re not required to do that right now under the current rules. Would we have to change the system to certify a petition? Would we need to? Is it necessary, given the context of how the other place operates and how we operate? It is almost night and day in regard to structure.
Ms. Fortin: It would depend on what you want from the petition. The House has mostly an honour-based system. A few checks are done. I presume that this comes from consultation that they had with MPs. A committee studied the matter, so I presume that’s how they came up with their certification system.
If we were to certify or verify signatures for petitions, we would ask senators to give us instructions on what it is exactly and what level of confidence you want from this certification. We would then be able to tell you, in terms of time, what it means. With the levels that we have, I presume that it would be quite minimal. If it’s something similar to what the House is doing, it would be verifying that there is a name and either a postal code that looks like a Canadian postal code or a city and province that’s included.
However, if it’s a more thorough verification, then it is definitely more time-consuming. We don’t have a high number of petitions, but we also don’t have a lot of staff. Depending on when a petition arrives, for example, it could impact how long we need to do the verification. The number of signatures on the petition, of course, would make a difference.
Senator Yussuff: I don’t know if you’re able to answer this. Based on past experience, none of this has been required to date in certifying a petition or verifying an email or a postal code, in the 8 or 11 petitions that have been utilized by senators in the past?
Ms. Fortin: No, we haven’t done any verification. The senator will table the document. Usually, ahead of time, they will consult our office to just make sure they understand the very few guidelines that we have. Other than that, there’s no verification.
Senator Yussuff: Given the history of this place, 100 and some years of history, is it a mystery that petitions haven’t been a big part of its existence? I know I’m asking you something for which none of us were around. I am just curious.
[Translation]
Senator Youance: I had the same question as Senator Yussuff. My preliminary question was this: Senators have made very little use of this mechanism. Can you tell us why?
When we hear the figures and hear about the possibility of a cost-benefit analysis, we see that it will cost $1 million a year for a petition, right?
I would like to return to the purpose of petitions and the ways in which they have been used. I really liked Ms. Fortin’s presentation when she said there were two types of petitions to support bills. If I take Senator Mégie’s example, she used this process, so that would be the equivalent of a written petition with 25 signatures in the House of Commons. The senator had consulted the House of Commons as you know to move this petition forward, so these are petitions that were presented to support a bill.
I’m going to speak to the second aspect, which is the issue at hand, and I’ll come back to Senator Yussuff’s bill, as he met with veterans to present his Wartime Service Recognition Bill. Perhaps our study on the petition should include recommendations for a trial period, and we could link all of this to our upcoming study on the bills. In fact, if senators haven’t used petitions, it may be because they haven’t needed to. However, if our analysis shows that this can help support a bill or develop a meaningful bill, such as Senator Yussuff’s bill, that might be worthwhile.
Since I also have to ask a question, do you think this makes sense?
Ms. Fortin: Petitions in support of public bills have been used very rarely. Yes, they can be a tool to support a bill, but there are others. For example, if Senator Yussuff’s bill goes to committee, veterans will be invited to testify. Some committees, for example, conducted studies focusing on a very specific population and issued a targeted call for briefs from that population. This provides them with much more information than a petition.
Yes, that can give you an indication that a certain number of Canadians support this initiative, but the information has minimal qualitative value. You can’t tell why they support the bill or if they’ve actually read it. You also have little information, which you might be able to obtain in other ways.
Senator Surette: Thank you very much.
I’ll continue in the same vein. If I understand correctly, the rules are currently entitled Petitions for Private Bills.
My first question is as follows: Are petitions of general interest allowed, or is it simply that since there is no follow-up, there is no point in proceeding with general petitions?
Next, if we want to move forward with petitions, that would mean we would have to amend the Rules of the Senate. If we amend the Rules, we would need to consider petitions related to the House of Commons or petitions on general matters. That is where you explained that this duplicates the work of the House of Commons and that, consequently, it might be better to leave this work to elected officials, since we cannot respond to petitions if we ask the government to get involved.
I have provided several points on the matter, but I simply want to make sure I have understood everything.
Ms. Fortin: I’ll try to address all the points.
General petitions, as you put it, are already accepted in the Senate. In recent years, we have mostly seen petitions in support of senators’ bills, but there have also been some as you noted that were more general in nature, such as Canadians wanting to highlight an injustice or asking for a specific issue in the petition to be addressed.
That is already allowed. It is indeed a type of petition. The other type, as I briefly mentioned at the beginning, is private members’ bills, which are also very rare. We might have one or two in a parliamentary session, and they must be introduced through a petition. I think you’re more interested in general petitions, and that’s why I focused on those.
If you wanted to allow electronic petitions, you would indeed need to make a change to the Rules. Then you could consider exactly what you want to do with electronic petitions. The House of Commons touched on this briefly, but when it introduced electronic petitions, it also included some specific provisions on this in its Standing Orders, including on certification and the minimum number of signatures required to trigger the government’s response process.
I’m not saying the Senate couldn’t include a process that would require a government response to a petition. We do this for committee reports, for example. What I mentioned is that the Senate cannot force the government to act. For example, even in a committee report, the Senate will request a response to its recommendations, but there is no mechanism requiring the government to implement the Senate’s recommendations. That’s the slight difference.
[English]
The Chair: There are additional senators who wish to ask questions, and we will do that, but I would like to save about seven minutes to talk about future business, colleagues.
Senator Batters: Ms. Fortin, there are a few things. First, even if we decided not to go forward with the e-petition thing, there are a few things that have come out today that I think have highlighted some things that can be improved.
I always used to joke, especially when I was first in the Senate, that there are forms for everything here — there is a form to do this, there is a form to do that — yet, we don’t even have a template form for a petition. That is something that should be developed, and I don’t think it necessarily requires a change in the Rules, but I would suggest that is something that should be developed.
Another thing is that unlike the House of Commons, regular paper petitions do not generate a response from the government. I think that’s something — no doubt, that would require a change to a rule, but I think that’s something that should be required. It should be no different than a written question that’s submitted to the government or a question during Question Period.
Those are just a few things I’ve been thinking as I sit here today.
My question for you is about this private bill petition. When I look at the Library of Parliament, it said that “a petition for a private bill must pay certain fees.” What are the fees for that?
Ms. Fortin: They are mostly related to translation. Also, at a certain point, there is publication in the Canada Gazette. The fees are minimal but mostly related to those. It’s a process that’s handled by the Law Clerk’s Office, mostly. If you want more information, I can certainly ask them for it.
Senator Batters: Even though you say it’s minimal, I would be curious what is “minimal.” Thank you.
Senator K. Wells: I would humbly suggest that the committee is asking the wrong questions. Maybe we should be asking why we have so few petitions. Is it a lack of awareness of the existing petitions? Are there certain limitations or barriers? Is it the lack of a template, a structure or guidance to have senators engage more with petitions?
We’re in a 21st-century world with a 19th-century petition process. It probably hasn’t changed in the 150 years since the Senate began.
It makes me think about the cost. We’re talking about the costs of creating an e-petition system, and that’s an important discussion, but what is the cost to democracy and civic engagement? We’re talking about a time where we’re trying to bring —
The Chair: Do you have a question?
Senator K. Wells: I do. That was a question.
What is the cost to democracy and civic engagement by not having an e-petition process?
I also think generally about the awareness and relevance of engagement. These are all questions that the Senate is asking: What is our value and role to Canadians?
Part of this has been mentioned here, but would you agree there is value to e-petitions and forms for informing an inquiry in the Senate, informing the basis of a Senate public bill? Often, I find myself asking where the basis of a Senate public bill came from. Was there consultation? Were Canadians supporting this, which gets introduced, which ties into what Senator Batters and maybe others said about our future public bill study — the future of a committee study, coming from a petition that is submitted.
Taking all of this into consideration, it does appear, from what I’ve heard, the administration is not really that interested in supporting this in the way that the conversation has been framed, from my understanding.
I guess I’m trying to get back to what the question is here.
Maybe I’ll ask a little bit different question —
The Chair: Just let me state that I think the administration has answered the questions they have been given. I didn’t sense from the administration’s answers that they are trying to end this conversation. That’s important, and if you have a question for our witnesses, that would be very good.
Senator K. Wells: I’m struggling to come up with the direct question here.
Do you see the role of moving e-petitions forward as part of what we’ve been talking about as a Senate modernization process — this one particular consideration?
The Chair: Ms. Fortin, do you want to answer that?
Ms. Fortin: It’s not really for us to say whether electronic petitions are a way to modernize the Senate.
I will just respond to one of your comments that the format of the petition doesn’t really matter in terms of whether you want to use a petition to support an inquiry, a bill, a motion — any business in the Senate — it could work with a paper petition, as well. Other than that, it’s really for senators to tell us what they want. If you want to have an e-petition system, we will be here to help and tell you how much it will cost, as well as if additional human resources are required.
However, it’s not really for us to make that decision. It is the same thing for a template: If that is something you would like to recommend, for example, in your report, it is definitely something that we could work with some guidelines and instructions that we receive from senators to build that template.
The Chair: Thank you.
I would like to thank our panel of witnesses today. With that, I will relieve the panel of their duties here.
I would like to raise a few points with the committee with respect to work on this subject matter. Colleagues, the Privacy Commissioner cannot appear next week; the Privacy Commissioner is engaged in a conference. The Privacy Commissioner has offered to present a written submission, so if it’s okay with you, I would like to accept that offer so we can make that part of the testimony.
Second, we had on our list of potential witnesses the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, which is, as you know, part of the CSE. They have indicated, as I suggested in the question I posed, that they are not the appropriate people to answer this. The questions that we would otherwise address to them would be better answered by the House of Commons. With your agreement, I would like to relieve them of being on our list.
Also, with respect to the MPs, we had a list of some MPs, one of whom, Ms. Ferreri, has confirmed, but we are still working on MPs Rempel Garner and Boulerice. With your agreement, I would ask the clerk to continue to pursue those or others on the list of users of the petition on the House of Commons so that we have a panel of two or three for our next meeting.
If that is agreeable?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
The Chair: The subsequent issue I would like to raise is with a bit of forecasting after this issue is dealt with.
We may have time at our next meeting to have some discussion on this so that the break can be utilized for some drafting of what we’ve heard from witnesses to help prep us for what we might wish to report.
I would also like to, for planning purposes, suggest that the study that we next pursue be the one with respect to Senate public bills rather than a review of the committees. We will be sharing with you the information we’ve received from groups and caucuses on committees. I think we have identified issues but no common solutions, and it may be better use of our time to see if we can address the Senate public bills in the medium term and come back to the committee mandate issue subsequently.
I would open up the floor for that because it would help prepare our staff for the subsequent discussions.
Senator Ringuette: I want to thank our research assistant for the documents in regard to the Senate public bills that they have already provided to us.
Last week, I had a conversation with many senators in different groups, and it is obviously an issue, a problem. Everyone is looking at this committee to study the issue and come up with recommendations. I believe the sooner we can move on this, the better we will all be.
I certainly concur that we should move as soon as possible to our study of Senate public bills. Thank you.
Senator Downe: I share the exact same views. I won’t repeat the comments. That’s a priority we should be working on.
We may want to suspend this current study. My personal view is that Canadians are well served by petitions. Anybody who wants to present a petition has an avenue to do it. There are cost implications and there are bigger questions. The overarching question is it should be the job of the senators other than some type of personal project they want to get on. If we could suspend this, and there may be a consensus to do this, chair, I don’t know, and move immediately to Senate public bills. I think time would be better spent given that we are rising at the end of June.
The Chair: I’m in your hands, colleagues. I was thinking of having the panel next week of the MPs who are using the e‑petitions and taking a bit of time at that meeting to determine whether we wish to finalize a report or, as you suggest, suspend that report at that point or just do a statement of what we’ve heard. That is all open.
If we agree today that our next issue is the Senate public bills, we can begin to provide guidance to our work at the next meeting so that we can utilize the time we come back in May until the end to see whether we can reach a consensus on at least some immediate actions on Senate public bills.
Senator Batters: I’m in agreement with having the meeting next week with the MPs panel and a discussion about that to see where we go and then, yes, I think it would be good timing to go forward with the Senate public bills after that.
The Chair: Very good.
If I can view that as a consensus, then I won’t delay.
(The committee adjourned.)