OTTAWA -- B.C. MPs and their constituents are leading the country in taking advantage of a new system to encourage grassroots democratic participation.
Their most popular e-petitions call on the federal government to crack down on foreign real estate ownership, relax pot laws, take a semi-automatic weapon off the restricted list, and ban the importation of dog and cat pelts.
Those four issues are among the top 10 in the country since the new system was introduced last December to modernize a tradition dating back to the Magna Carta.
E-petitions, the initiative of B.C. MP Kennedy Stewart, have generated more than 300,000 signatures across the country, according to data collected by Kennedy and made public this week.
The Burnaby MP's analysis of data indicates that as of last week B.C. MPs endorsed 54 petitions, well above the 41 in Ontario and far ahead of third-place Quebec, where only 15 petitions were sponsored in a province with 78 MPs.
Stewart's data also shows that Green Party leader Elizabeth May (Saanich-Gulf Islands), who has sponsored 10 petitions, and the 44-member NDP caucus, which has backed 43, are the most active.
The much-larger Liberal and Conservative caucuses are close behind the NDP, with 39 and 38 petitions sponsored, respectively.
A total of 71,089 British Columbians have signed the petitions as of last week, which relative to the province's population is the highest in the country.
While left-leaning MPs are most active in using the system, the granddaddy of petitions is one sponsored by Alberta Tory Shannon Stubbs.
Her drive to rally support for Western Canada's beleaguered oil and gas industry has as of Monday garnered 34,537 signatures.
"We, the undersigned, citizens of Canada," it states, "call upon the government of Canada to vocally defend the oil and gas industry and the use of pipelines, and to make the building of oil, gas and diluted bitumen pipelines across Canada, to tidewater, and into the United States, a national priority."
The second most popular petition is one championed by Bob Zimmer, the MP for Prince George-Peace River-Northern Rockies.
It calls on the government to treat the AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, the same kind used in a number of mass shootings, as a hunting rifle by removing it from the restricted firearms list.
That petition has collected more than 25,000 signatures, with one-fifth of that total from B.C. residents.
In third place is an Elizabeth May-sponsored petition, initiated by Victoria pot legalization activist Sam Vekemans, calling for a sweeping liberalization of Canada's pot laws.
It has received more than 20,000 signatures.
Stewart said it makes sense that B.C. and Alberta, with the second-highest participation rate on a per capita basis with just under 52,000 signatures, are the most enthusiastic.
Citizens in both provinces are more familiar with direct-democracy tools like referenda, said the former Simon Fraser University political scientist who represents the Burnaby South riding.
"B.C. and Alberta MPs and their citizens are the first to catch on to this, and the ones using it the most, because it's more in tune with their political culture,"
Prior to December MPs, using an archaic system dating back to the earliest years of parliamentary democracy, would rise in Parliament and submit paper petitions with handwritten signatures.
The current system, which allows petitions to be certified and submitted to the government if 500 or more signatures is obtained, only requires the government to provide a written response.
The system, which requires a full-time employee to deal with the inflow of e-petitions, required one-time funding of $250,000 plus an annual charge of $197,964, according to the House of Commons.
Stewart said he's confident that when a parliamentary committee conducts a mandatory review starting in December of 2017, MPs will move to the United Kingdom model.
In the U.K. petitions must have 10,000 signatures to get an official response, and those with more than 100,000 trigger a parliamentary debate.
