Chapter 22Public Petitions

Guidelines for Petitions

This section presents the characteristics common to both paper petitions²⁶ and e-petitions. For a general overview of a typical petition process, see Figure 22.2, “Typical Petition Process”.

Image depicting, in a series of boxes linked by lines, the typical process for paper and for electronic petitions. On the left side, a paper petition, after the gathering of signatures, is sent to the Clerk of Petitions by a Member of Parliament. The Clerk of Petitions certifies the petition if it has at least 25 signatures. On the right side, an electronic petition must be created on the House of Commons website, supported by five Canadian citizens or residents, and sponsored by a Member of Parliament. If the Clerk of Petitions finds it admissible, the petition will be published for signatures for 120 days. It will then be certified by the Clerk of Petitions if it has at least 500 signatures. Once certified, both types of petitions follow the same process: presentation or tabling in the House of Commons; sending to the Privy Council Office; and tabling of a government response within 45 days of presentation or tabling. — Figure 22.2 Typical Petition Process

Petitions have always been subject to verification by an official of the House of Commons. Amendments to the rules, adopted in 1910, made the first mention of the Clerk of Petitions as the person charged with this responsibility.²⁷ Until 1986, such verification took place after Members had presented their petitions. The Standing Orders now require petitions to be certified correct as to form and content by the Clerk of Petitions prior to being published online or presented to the House.²⁸ Petitions not meeting the form and content requirements cannot be certified, and only certified petitions can be presented to the House.²⁹

Before gathering signatures for a paper petition or submitting an e-petition, the petitioner may consult the Clerk of Petitions to ensure that the proposed text is in keeping with the rules and practices of the House.

Form

A petition typically begins with a superscription identifying it as a petition and indicating that it is addressed to the House of Commons, the government, a Minister or a Member. This is followed by a statement identifying the petitioners. The petitioners then draw the attention of the addressee to a statement of grievance, which is generally set out in paragraph form. The final and essential part of the petition is a request, called a “prayer”, in which the petitioners specify the action they wish to see taken in response to their grievance. Then follow the signatures and addresses of the petitioners. The recommended form of petition is reproduced as Figure 22.3, “Form of a Petition”.

Figure 22.3 Form of a Petition

Language, Wording and Style

Petitions may be written in either of the official languages.³⁰ They should be respectful and temperate in tone, and there should be no disrespect to the Sovereign or offensive imputation on the character or conduct of Parliament, the courts or any other constituted authority.³¹ For many years, it was customary for petitions to be written in a formal style of expression, opening with the words:

To the Honourable the House of Commons in Parliament assembled. The Petition of the undersigned … who now avail themselves of their ancient and undoubted right thus to present a grievance common to your Petitioners in the certain assurance that your honourable House will therefore provide a remedy, humbly sheweth

and closing with the words “and your petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray”. In 1985, a special committee recommended that this traditional language, which it saw as archaic, no longer be used.³² While petitions couched in the formal style continue to be presented, petitions employing more contemporary wording are equally acceptable to the House, as long as the import is the same. For example, in Figure 22.3, “Form of a Petition”, the opening and closing formulae quoted above do not appear, and the petitioners “request” that Parliament respond to their grievance rather than “humbly pray and call upon Parliament” to do so.

Addressee

Until 2003, all petitions were to be addressed to the House of Commons or to the House of Commons in Parliament assembled. Since 2003, certification has also been granted to petitions addressed to the Government of Canada as a whole, a particular Minister of the Crown or a Member of Parliament.³³ In practice, petitions addressed to more than one of these addressees are also accepted.

Prayer

Petitions, to be certified for presentation to the House, must contain a prayer, that is, a clear, proper and respectful request that the House, the government, a Minister or a Member take, or refrain from taking, some sort of action in response to an alleged grievance. Petitions without prayers, that is, documents consisting solely of statements of opinion or statements of grievance, cannot be accepted as petitions.³⁴ The action sought may also call for the expenditure of public funds.³⁵

Matters Under the Authority of the House or the Federal Government

The prayer of a petition must request action which is within the powers of the House or the federal government to take. Therefore, it follows that the petition as a whole must set forth a case where the House, the government, a Minister or a Member has the authority to intervene.³⁶ A petition pertaining to a matter that falls outside the jurisdiction of the House or of the federal government (a matter under the jurisdiction of the courts, or of a provincial or municipal government, for example) cannot be certified for presentation to the House.³⁷ A petition requesting two or more actions may still be certified if one of the requests for intervention is not within the jurisdiction of the House or of the federal government.³⁸

Over the years, the House has chosen to delegate certain matters to the courts and other administrative and regulatory bodies. Petitions dealing with matters which the House has delegated to another body have not always been found acceptable.³⁹

By virtue of parliamentary privilege, the House has the inherent right to decide matters affecting its own membership. The power of the House to expel one of its Members derives from its traditional authority to determine whether Members are qualified to sit. Therefore, petitions requesting the expulsion of a Member of Parliament have been considered unacceptable.⁴⁰

The sub judice convention

A petition may not concern a matter that is sub judice.⁴¹ This convention, which has long restricted the content of Members’ speeches so as not to interfere with the judiciary, was extended to the content of petitions in 2015.

Signatures

For certification, the threshold for valid signatures is 25 for paper petitions and 500 for electronic petitions. To be valid, the signature must be that of a Canadian citizen or a resident of Canada.⁴² There is no minimum age requirement for anyone signing a petition, and one person cannot sign for a group.

A Member may sign a petition, but should ask another Member to present it.⁴³ However, the signatures of Members inscribed on petitions are not counted toward the valid signatures.

Last, any forgery or fraud in the preparation of petitions or signatures, or any complicity in or knowledge thereof, may be dealt with as a breach of privilege.⁴⁴

26.: Standing Order 36 and the Thirty-Third Report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs use the expression “pétition sur support papier” in French.
27.: Journals, April 29, 1910, pp. 535–6, Debates, cols. 8365–7. See also Rules of the House of Commons of Canada, 1910, Rule 75.
28.: Standing Order 36(1), (2) and (2.4).
29.: On occasion, petitions failing to be certified have been presented with the unanimous consent of the House (Journals, February 18, 1987, p. 503, Debates, p. 3568; Journals, June 12, 2003, p. 918, Debates, pp. 7222–3; Journals, November 2, 2007, p. 137, Debates, p. 753; Journals, February 11, 2009, p. 123, Debates, pp. 681–3; Journals, February 14, 2014, p. 562, Debates, p. 3061; Journals, April 9, 2014, p. 827, Debates, p. 4481; Journals, June 18, 2015, p. 2835, Debates, p. 15259). In an unusual proceeding in 1992, unanimous consent was given for an uncertified petition to be “received” by the House—although the Standing Orders no longer provided for petitions to be received—and referred to a standing committee for consideration (Journals, November 18, 1992, p. 2070). In another unusual proceeding, on June 17, 2008, a petition was presented with the unanimous consent of the House outside Routine Proceedings and even before it was examined by the Clerk of Petitions (Journals, p. 1003, Debates, p. 7070).
30.: Sir John George Bourinot, Parliamentary Procedure and Practice in the Dominion of Canada, 4th ed., ed. Thomas Barnard Flint (Toronto: Canada Law Book, 1916), p. 235. See also Official Languages Act, RSC 1985, c 31 (4th Supp), s 22. Petitions written in a language other than English or French may be accepted provided that the text of the petition is also available in one of the two official languages.
31.: Bourinot, Parliamentary Procedure and Practice, 4th ed., p. 231. See, for example, Journals, March 30, 1905, p. 234; April 5, 1909, p. 234.
32.: Third Report of the Special Committee on Reform of the House of Commons, p. 45, presented to the House on June 18, 1985 (Journals, p. 839). The modern wording was not, however, proposed until several years later.
33.: Standing Order 36(1.1)(a) and (2.1)(a).
34.: Journals, March 22, 1876, p. 180; Debates, April 23, 1879, pp. 1453–4.
35.: Standing Order 36(2)(b) and (2.1)(b).
36.: Journals, February 16, 1956, p. 163; June 7, 1972, pp. 361–2.
37.: On one occasion pre-dating the requirement for certification, a Member presented a petition concerning safety at a certain street intersection in her constituency. The Speaker suggested that such petitions be directed to the competent municipal authority. The Clerk of Petitions later reported that this petition had failed to meet the requirements (Debates, June 11, 1985, p. 5648; Journals, June 12, 1985, p. 796).
38.: May, Erskine May’s Treatise on the Law, Privileges, Proceedings and Usage of Parliament, 24th ed., p. 486.
39.: For example, petitions questioning the return of a Member were not received because the House had vested in the courts the responsibility for matters relating to the election of Members (Journals, April 20, 1874, p. 82; February 15, 1881, pp. 199–200). On the other hand, petitions concerning the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, the independent agency regulating the broadcasting system, have at different times been rejected (Journals, June 7, 1972, pp. 361–2; October 24, 1973, pp. 591–2) and accepted (Debates, April 30, 1984, p. 3235; Journals, May 1, 1984, p. 400).
40.: John Patrick Joseph Maingot, Parliamentary Privilege in Canada, 2nd ed. (Montreal: House of Commons and McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997), pp. 47, 188, 247; May, Erskine May’s Treatise on the Law, Privileges, Proceedings and Usage of Parliament, 24th ed., p. 264; Harvey v New Brunswick (AG), [1996] 2 SCR 876; Canada (House of Commons) v Vaid, 2005 SCC 30. For further information, see Chapter 4, “The House of Commons and Its Members”.
41.: Standing Order 36(1.1)(g) and (2.1)(e). For further information on the sub judice convention, see Chapter 13, “Rules of Order and Decorum”.
42.: Standing Order 36(1.1)(h) and (2.4). Petitions signed exclusively by non-resident foreigners are not admissible. See, for example, Journals, October 5, 1983, pp. 6264–5. However, in 1984, a petition signed by Canadian citizens as well as by foreigners was received with the unanimous consent of the House (Debates, November 20, 1984, pp. 412–3). In a similar situation arising in 1990, the Speaker ruled that the right of Canadians to petition their House of Commons would be better served if such petitions, provided they were otherwise in order, could be presented notwithstanding the presence of “the occasional signature of a non-Canadian not resident in Canada”. The requirement for the minimum number of signatures must, however, be met (Debates, December 19, 1990, pp. 16963–4).
43.: May, Erskine May’s Treatise on the Law, Privileges, Proceedings and Usage of Parliament, 24th ed., p. 488.
44.: Bourinot, Parliamentary Procedure and Practice, 4th ed., p. 237; May, Erskine May’s Treatise on the Law, Privileges, Proceedings and Usage of Parliament, 24th ed., p. 253. While doubts have been expressed from time to time concerning the authenticity of signatures. See, for example, Debates, May 21, 1885, pp. 2023–9; October 28, 1983, pp. 28475–9, no breach of privilege alleging fraud or forgery in the preparation of petitions has yet been found.

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