The poll suggests an overwhelming majority of Canadians support Stewart’s motion calling on Parliament to accept electronic petitions that could – if numbers warrant – force a debate in the House of Commons on any matter.
Stewart’s bid to allow e-petitions has won support from not only other New Democrats and organizations like the gay rights group Egale, but also Reform party founder Preston Manning, the right-wing Canadian Taxpayers Federation, and one of Parliament’s most outspoken social conservatives, Saskatchewan MP Brad Trost.
Kennedy returned the favour this week by endorsing Trost’s motion calling on MPs to end the control Prime Minister Stephen Harper has over who is picked to chair parliamentary committees.
That motion already had the public support of Tory MPs known for their desire to bring back legal limits on access to abortion, like B.C. Conservative Russ Hiebert. But it is also supported by MP with a range of ideological interests, including Green party leader Elizabeth May, Ontario Liberal Ted Hsu and Quebec New Democrat Jamie Nicholls.
Trost said the NDP MP’s poll shows there is a thirst in Canada for greater participatory democracy, though he stops short of suggesting it’s a revival of Western Canada’s populist traditions embodied by Manning’s Reform movement of the 1980s and 1990s and the Saskatchewan and B.C. NDP of generations past.
“I don’t know if you can call two MPs co-signing each other’s motions a revival,” Trost said in an interview.
But he said there is a western Canadian attitude – “we don’t really have a class culture, and everyone feels sort of equal and open” – that is influencing the debate.
Alberta Tory MP Brent Rathgeber, one of a group of MPs who have spoken out against top-down control of what parliamentarians can say, is also encouraged by public support for e-petitions.
“I do believe it is a very incremental but very important step to promote direct democracy and citizen engagement.”
The online poll of 1,006 Canadians, conducted March 25 and 26 by Vancouver-based Angus Reid Public Opinion, found that 55 per cent of Canadians “strongly” support and another 27 per cent “somewhat” support a system to allow them to put requests to government via online petitions.
Only 12 per cent were either strongly or somewhat opposed, while the rest weren’t sure.
The B.C. sub-sample was virtually identical to the poll’s national results, which is considered by the pollster to be accurate to within 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
The current petition process, which dates to the origins of British parliamentary democracy, requires a constituent to submit a written petition with at least 25 handwritten signatures. The petition is read out in the House of Commons and the government then has 45 days to respond in writing.
Respondents to the poll funded by Stewart’s office were also asked what they thought should be the minimum number of “signatures” required to force a parliamentary debate.
The most popular threshold was 25,000, endorsed by 20 per cent of respondents, with 100,000 a close second at 19 per cent. Twelve per cent said 50,000 – the figure suggested in Stewart’s motion – was adequate.
A mild Tory backbench revolt against Harper’s top-down management style cooled this week when B.C. MP Mark Warawa said he wouldn’t push for a secret vote on whether MPs should be allowed to vote on his motion condemning sex-selection abortions.
Kennedy and the other MPs said they recognize there is a fine balance between the need for elected officials to be able to speak freely and represent constituents, and the requirement that parties give the public a coherent and unified message.
But they argue that the balance has shifted too far toward top-down control in a Parliament dominated by careerist MPs reading statements written by the leader’s political aides.
They say they hope both motions – to be voted on before the summer recess – will shift that balance.
“My inclination,” said Stewart, a former Simon Fraser University political scientist who has written extensively on participatory democracy, “is to try to err towards the side of MPs being able to speak more freely.”
Original Article
Source: canada.com
Author: Peter O'Neil
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