Check It Out: Petitions make a difference

By Joan Janzen
joanjanzen@yahoo.com

I read a joke that read like this ... “I petitioned to rename a Canadian province. Their government would have Nunavut.”

You may have noticed a significant increase in the amount of petitions made available on social media throughout the past few years. I know I have personally signed more petitions than ever before. However, when people sign a lot of petitions, they may begin to question whether their signature makes a difference in the long run. Well, according to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) those petitions you sign do make a difference.

Last year, a CTF petition to cut off taxpayer support for the famous royal couple, Harry and Meghan, was successful. In Quebec, one of CTF’s petitions led the government to refund taxpayers $1.5 billion in hydro overpayments.

Recently over 200,000 Canadians signed the CTF’s petition calling on our Prime Minister to scrap the lifetime expense account for retired governors general. The CTF delivered this, their largest ever petition, to the Prime Minister’s Office in person. There were so many boxes of paper, the trolley they used for delivery broke. There were eight boxes delivered to the Prime Minister’s door. All that paper helped make the message clear - Canadians agree that retired governors general should not be getting $206,000 annual expense accounts for life. Petitions are an efficient way for Canadians to keep pushing the government to act.

Not only petitions, but postcards have recently been used as a means of communicating to the government. When Prime Minister Trudeau recently sent out postcards, the CTF notified Canadians to use their postcard to send him their views about multiple issues. The government showed they cared by sending blank postcards to Canadians from sea to sea, with the postage paid.

As a result, thousands of CTF supporters sent the postcards to the prime minister’s office with their concerns. Some of those concerns included increasing carbon taxes, the trillion-dollar debt that is mortgaging our children’s futures, and pleas to save our oil and natural gas industry and Line 5 transporting Canadian oil east to final destinations in Ontario, Quebec, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin.

There seems to be petitions available for everything ... from the pipelines, to cutting off taxpayer support of royals, refunding taxpayers, or scrapping retired governors general expense accounts. Whether it’s by means of petitions or postcards, Canadians simply want their voices to be heard and acknowledged.

You can contact me at joanjanzen@yahoo.com