Conservative MP Leslyn Lewis rises during Question Period on Sept. 27, 2022 in Ottawa.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
Leslyn Lewis, a front-bench Conservative MP, found herself in the crosshairs of the Prime Minister’s Office last week after she used social media to promote a petition to the House of Commons calling on Canada to pull out of the United Nations.
Not only did she promote the petition, but it turned out she was the MP who sponsored it – a requirement for bringing a citizen’s petition to the House.
“What is it about the UN that Conservatives don’t like?” Mohammad Hussain, a press secretary for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, said in a statement after Ms. Lewis tweeted about the petition. “Is it the work they do for children around the world, is it their programs to support women’s rights and human rights?”
This tempest in a pot of partisan tea has a couple of noteworthy aspects to it, one being that it is a portal into the world of Parliamentary petitions.
The right of citizens to petition Parliament dates to medieval times, according to a history of the practice on the Parliament of Canada website. But when in the 1980s it became too onerous for the House to accommodate all the petitions thrown its way – 48 MPs rose to present 358 petitions in a single day in 1985 – Parliament streamlined the process.
Today, all petitions have to be certified by the Clerk of Petitions. The clerk verifies that a petition has been created by a living, breathing Canadian resident of any age, that it has a minimum number of valid signatures on it, that it calls upon the House, the government, an MP or a cabinet minister to undertake a concrete action or remedy (in other words, it’s not just a rant), that it relates to a federal jurisdiction, and that it is sponsored by an MP.
If a written petition meets those conditions and garners 25 valid signatures, it has to be presented to Parliament, and the government has to provide a written response to it within 45 days. For an online petition, the threshold is 500 e-signatures.
All of which is great. It’s a real example of direct democracy in action, one that many Canadians take advantage of in their quest to be heard.
In the 26 months of the current Parliament, 2,262 petitions – on everything from air transportation to waste disposal – have sought certification. The vast majority received it; 1,900 of them solicited responses from government.
None of them could have moved forward without an MP stepping up to sponsor them. So what could be better than MPs like Ms. Lewis enabling Canadians of all stripes and beliefs to have their views expressed directly to Parliament?
Every petition comes with a disclaimer that says the MP sponsoring it doesn’t endorse the views it holds, and isn’t responsible for the information or views in it. There is not, in other words, a smoking gun proving that Ms. Lewis and/or her party is in favour of withdrawing Canada from the UN.
That said, Ms. Lewis is not off the hook.
There might be an argument for leaving the UN (for the record, our position is that it is a flawed but vital linchpin in the rules-based international order, and Canada should be an active member).
But the petition Ms. Lewis sponsored is based entirely on the fantasy that the UN’s agenda is an evil plot to undermine personal freedoms in the service of such right-wing conspiracy devils as the “World Economic Forum, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, International Planned Parenthood Federation, etc.”
When a media outlet interviewed the British Columbia man who asked Ms. Lewis to sponsor his petition, he went further. “If they get what they want, it would be the elimination of a majority of the population and those that would remain would be slaves, and they would be repeatedly injected with mRNA injections to change their DNA so they lose their humanity and they are different creatures.”
Ms. Lewis didn’t have to sponsor this petition. The rules of Parliament make it very clear that MPs are not obliged to do so if asked. It’s a choice, and in her case it’s a telling one.
She should have known better than to lend her name to this sort of inanity, much less promote it on social media. MPs need to show respect for the truth and for Parliament’s institutions, and they need to stand up to misinformation.
Ms. Lewis has now put her boss, Pierre Poilievre, in the position of having to make clear before the next election where he stands on the UN. If he won’t, maybe someone should start a petition.