For immediate release: June 7, 2024
QUEEN’S PARK – MPP Brady recently tabled a motion urging the Ontario Legislature to catch up with the House of Commons and allow citizens the ability to send electronic petitions (e-petitions) to the Ontario government. The federal government has empowered Canadians to sign and submit online e-petitions since December 2015.
“Canadians have been sending petitions to colonial, imperial, federal, provincial and municipal governments in earnest since the British Conquest of 1763,” Brady said. “Those petitions of antiquity would have been on paper, much as they still are today in Ontario. But, as the federal government has realized since 2015, with technological advancements, petitions can be distributed and submitted faster and easier electronically. I think Ontario should update itself to 2015 in this sense.”
The federal government e-petitions have proven to give more Canadians the conduit to get their message to the federal government. Historical data shows that, in the first three months after the House of Commons launched the launch of their petition website, 40 petitions were created with more than 100,000 signatures.
“It would take some effort and planning for Ontario to set up a petition website like the feds,” Brady said. “But the benefits to democracy and efficiency would be worth the effort.”
MPP Brady’s motion read as follows: That, in the opinion of this House, the Government of Ontario, should liberalize public engagement and recognize electronic petitions as a valid, efficient, equitable and accessible form of public engagement when requesting action from the provincial government.
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For more information, contact MPP Bobbi Ann Brady at [email protected] or 519-428-0446