NDP hopes to open up Parliament with e-petition motion

Here's a novel idea: allow Canadians to have a say about what's being debated in the House of Commons.

Two New Democrat MPs put forward a motion last week, which would allow for an e-petition submission process where certified petitions garnering 50,000 or more signatures would trigger an hour of Parliamentary debate.

"Democratic decline, as can be readily seen in collapsing voter turnout rates and diminishing levels of social capital, is a distributing trend governments need to address," notes a statement released by the NDP.

"A modern petitions process would be able to harness the robust dialogue happening on important issues."

The e-petition motion, which if passed would be non-binding on government, means any Canadian resident would be able to request a petition on any topic, with the support of any MP. It would then be created and posted on a parliamentary website, with its own URL web address for people to distribute electronically.

To protect privacy, names and email addresses would not be shown on the sites, only the number of signatures. If the number reaches 50,000 or more within six months, the Speaker of the House would present it for one hour of debate which would then require a written reply from government.

"I've already had some interest from the Conservative side of the House and I'm hoping that I can foster goodwill over there and we can get this through," MP Kennedy Stewart, the motion's co-presenter, said in an interview with the Burnaby Newsleader.

Similar online petitioning processes already exist in Quebec's National Assembly and in the U.K.

In the U.K, the first "e-petitions" included suggestions about bringing back the death penalty, keeping all Formula One races on terrestrial TV, leaving the EU and a lowering the voting age.