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Petitioning is the oldest direct line between citizens and Parliament — and since 2015, it runs online. A paper petition needs 25 signatures and an MP to present it; an e-petition needs 500 signatures to be certified and presented. Either way, once a petition is presented in the House, the government must table a written response within 45 days. This explainer covers how to start one, every step of the process, and the honest answer about what a petition can and cannot achieve.
The right to petition Parliament predates Confederation, and it remains one of the few formal mechanisms by which any citizen or resident of Canada — no minimum age, no cost — can put an issue before the House of Commons and compel a written government answer. Two streams exist. Paper petitions follow the traditional route: a petition addressed to the House, in respectful language, asking Parliament or the government to act on something within federal jurisdiction, with at least 25 valid signatures, certified by the Clerk of Petitions and presented in the House by an MP. E-petitions, launched in December 2015 at petitions.ourcommons.ca, moved the process online: a petitioner drafts the text, gathers five supporters, and finds an MP willing to sponsor it; once published, the petition is open for signature for a set period, and if it collects at least 500 valid signatures it is certified and presented in the House. The key feature of both streams is the response rule in the Standing Orders: the government must table a response to every presented petition within 45 calendar days, and if it fails, the matter is referred to a committee. The honest limits: petitions do not trigger debates or votes, do not bind the government to act, and responses often restate existing policy. What they reliably do is put an issue — and the government's official position on it — on the permanent public record.
Petitioning the Crown and Parliament is older than Canada — it's one of the founding practices of parliamentary government, and it survives in the House of Commons as a working process, not a ceremonial one.
The modern shape is simple. A petition is a formal request — the traditional term is a "prayer" — addressed to the House of Commons, the government, a minister, or an MP, asking for action on a matter within **federal jurisdiction**. It must use respectful language, ask for something Parliament or the government can actually do, and be certified as procedurally correct by the **Clerk of Petitions** before it can be presented.
Two streams exist today:
- **Paper petitions** — the traditional route, requiring at least **25 valid signatures** with addresses, collected on paper. - **E-petitions** — since **December 2015**, an official online system at [petitions.ourcommons.ca](https://petitions.ourcommons.ca/), requiring **500 signatures** to reach the House.
Either way, the destination is the same: presentation in the House by an MP, and a mandatory written government response. Petitions are free, open to any citizen or resident of Canada, and — unusually for parliamentary machinery — require no party, no lawyer, and no money.
The e-petition process runs through the House of Commons' own site and has five stages:
1. **Draft.** Create an account at petitions.ourcommons.ca (citizens and residents of Canada only) and write the petition: whom it's addressed to, the grievance, and the specific request. The Clerk's office screens for form — federal jurisdiction, respectful language, no duplicate of an open petition. 2. **Find five supporters.** Before anything is published, five people must endorse the draft. This is a spam filter, not a campaign — their names don't appear publicly. 3. **Find an MP to sponsor it.** Every e-petition needs a Member of Parliament willing to sponsor it. A natural first ask is your own MP — [find your MP](/find-your-mp) — but any MP may sponsor, and **sponsorship is not endorsement**: an MP can sponsor a petition they personally oppose, on the principle that constituents deserve access to the process. 4. **Gather signatures.** Once published, the petition is open for online signature for a fixed period chosen when it's created. Signatories must be citizens or residents of Canada; the system validates each signature. 5. **Certification and presentation.** If the petition reaches **500 valid signatures**, the Clerk of Petitions certifies it and the sponsoring MP presents it in the House — usually a brief statement during Routine Proceedings. Falling short of 500 means the petition simply closes, unpresented.
Paper petitions skip the sponsorship formalities — any MP may present a certified paper petition with 25 or more valid signatures — but follow the same rules on form and jurisdiction.
Here is the enforceable heart of the process. Under the Standing Orders, once a petition is presented in the House, **the government must table a response within 45 calendar days.**
That response is a written statement, prepared by the responsible department and tabled in Parliament, setting out the government's position on what the petition asks. It becomes part of the parliamentary record and is published alongside the petition itself — for e-petitions, on the same page as the text and the signature count, permanently.
And the deadline has teeth, of a procedural kind: **if the government fails to respond within 45 days, the matter is referred to a standing committee**, which puts the lapse itself on a committee's agenda.
It's worth being precise about what this guarantees:
- **Guaranteed:** an official, written, public statement of the government's position, on a deadline, attributable and permanent. - **Not guaranteed:** substance. Responses are drafted by departments, reviewed for caution, and frequently restate existing policy in careful language. A response that says, in effect, "the government thanks the petitioners and believes current measures are adequate" fully satisfies the rule.
That gap — between *an answer* and *a real answer* — is the single most important thing to understand about petitions before starting one.
The honest scorecard:
**A petition cannot:**
- Trigger a debate or a vote in the House. Unlike the United Kingdom, where petitions past a threshold are considered for parliamentary debate, Canada's House of Commons has no signature level that forces one. - Compel the government to act, change a policy, or introduce a bill. - Address provincial or municipal matters — federal jurisdiction only.
**A petition can:**
- Put an issue on the official parliamentary record, presented in the House. - Force the government to state a written position within 45 days — a position that can then be quoted, checked, and compared against what the government later does. - Demonstrate concrete public support. Signature counts are public, and a petition that gathers tens of thousands of signatures is a visible signal to every MP whose constituents signed. - Feed the slower machinery of change: opposition MPs mine petition topics for [Question Period](/news/question-period-the-actual-rules-and-why-nobody-has-to-answer) and [private members' bills](/news/private-members-bills-why-most-die-and-how-the-lottery-works), and committees take note of what citizens are petitioning about.
The realistic model is this: a petition is an **on-record instrument**, not a lever. It converts diffuse public concern into two durable artifacts — a certified statement of what petitioners want, and an official statement of what the government says about it. On its own, that changes nothing. Combined with press attention, committee work, and eventually votes — the things this site tracks — it's one of the few pieces of parliamentary machinery a citizen can operate without being elected first.
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<!-- Parliament Audit — republished under CC BY-ND 4.0 -->
<article>
<h1>Any Canadian Can Make the Government Respond in Writing Within 45 Days. Here's How Petitions to Parliament Actually Work.</h1>
<p><em>By Parliament Audit · July 5, 2026 · 6 min read</em></p>
<p><strong>The right to petition Parliament predates Confederation, and it remains one of the few formal mechanisms by which any citizen or resident of Canada — no minimum age, no cost — can put an issue before the House of Commons and compel a written government answer. Two streams exist. Paper petitions follow the traditional route: a petition addressed to the House, in respectful language, asking Parliament or the government to act on something within federal jurisdiction, with at least 25 valid signatures, certified by the Clerk of Petitions and presented in the House by an MP. E-petitions, launched in December 2015 at petitions.ourcommons.ca, moved the process online: a petitioner drafts the text, gathers five supporters, and finds an MP willing to sponsor it; once published, the petition is open for signature for a set period, and if it collects at least 500 valid signatures it is certified and presented in the House. The key feature of both streams is the response rule in the Standing Orders: the government must table a response to every presented petition within 45 calendar days, and if it fails, the matter is referred to a committee. The honest limits: petitions do not trigger debates or votes, do not bind the government to act, and responses often restate existing policy. What they reliably do is put an issue — and the government's official position on it — on the permanent public record.</strong></p>
<h2>The oldest tool citizens have</h2>
<p>Petitioning the Crown and Parliament is older than Canada — it's one of the founding practices of parliamentary government, and it survives in the House of Commons as a working process, not a ceremonial one.</p>
<p>The modern shape is simple. A petition is a formal request — the traditional term is a "prayer" — addressed to the House of Commons, the government, a minister, or an MP, asking for action on a matter within **federal jurisdiction**. It must use respectful language, ask for something Parliament or the government can actually do, and be certified as procedurally correct by the **Clerk of Petitions** before it can be presented.</p>
<p>Two streams exist today:</p>
<p>- **Paper petitions** — the traditional route, requiring at least **25 valid signatures** with addresses, collected on paper.
- **E-petitions** — since **December 2015**, an official online system at [petitions.ourcommons.ca](https://petitions.ourcommons.ca/), requiring **500 signatures** to reach the House.</p>
<p>Either way, the destination is the same: presentation in the House by an MP, and a mandatory written government response. Petitions are free, open to any citizen or resident of Canada, and — unusually for parliamentary machinery — require no party, no lawyer, and no money.</p>
<h2>Starting an e-petition, step by step</h2>
<p>The e-petition process runs through the House of Commons' own site and has five stages:</p>
<p>1. **Draft.** Create an account at petitions.ourcommons.ca (citizens and residents of Canada only) and write the petition: whom it's addressed to, the grievance, and the specific request. The Clerk's office screens for form — federal jurisdiction, respectful language, no duplicate of an open petition.
2. **Find five supporters.** Before anything is published, five people must endorse the draft. This is a spam filter, not a campaign — their names don't appear publicly.
3. **Find an MP to sponsor it.** Every e-petition needs a Member of Parliament willing to sponsor it. A natural first ask is your own MP — [find your MP](/find-your-mp) — but any MP may sponsor, and **sponsorship is not endorsement**: an MP can sponsor a petition they personally oppose, on the principle that constituents deserve access to the process.
4. **Gather signatures.** Once published, the petition is open for online signature for a fixed period chosen when it's created. Signatories must be citizens or residents of Canada; the system validates each signature.
5. **Certification and presentation.** If the petition reaches **500 valid signatures**, the Clerk of Petitions certifies it and the sponsoring MP presents it in the House — usually a brief statement during Routine Proceedings. Falling short of 500 means the petition simply closes, unpresented.</p>
<p>Paper petitions skip the sponsorship formalities — any MP may present a certified paper petition with 25 or more valid signatures — but follow the same rules on form and jurisdiction.</p>
<h2>The 45-day rule: what a petition actually guarantees</h2>
<p>Here is the enforceable heart of the process. Under the Standing Orders, once a petition is presented in the House, **the government must table a response within 45 calendar days.**</p>
<p>That response is a written statement, prepared by the responsible department and tabled in Parliament, setting out the government's position on what the petition asks. It becomes part of the parliamentary record and is published alongside the petition itself — for e-petitions, on the same page as the text and the signature count, permanently.</p>
<p>And the deadline has teeth, of a procedural kind: **if the government fails to respond within 45 days, the matter is referred to a standing committee**, which puts the lapse itself on a committee's agenda.</p>
<p>It's worth being precise about what this guarantees:</p>
<p>- **Guaranteed:** an official, written, public statement of the government's position, on a deadline, attributable and permanent.
- **Not guaranteed:** substance. Responses are drafted by departments, reviewed for caution, and frequently restate existing policy in careful language. A response that says, in effect, "the government thanks the petitioners and believes current measures are adequate" fully satisfies the rule.</p>
<p>That gap — between *an answer* and *a real answer* — is the single most important thing to understand about petitions before starting one.</p>
<h2>What petitions can and cannot achieve</h2>
<p>The honest scorecard:</p>
<p>**A petition cannot:**</p>
<p>- Trigger a debate or a vote in the House. Unlike the United Kingdom, where petitions past a threshold are considered for parliamentary debate, Canada's House of Commons has no signature level that forces one.
- Compel the government to act, change a policy, or introduce a bill.
- Address provincial or municipal matters — federal jurisdiction only.</p>
<p>**A petition can:**</p>
<p>- Put an issue on the official parliamentary record, presented in the House.
- Force the government to state a written position within 45 days — a position that can then be quoted, checked, and compared against what the government later does.
- Demonstrate concrete public support. Signature counts are public, and a petition that gathers tens of thousands of signatures is a visible signal to every MP whose constituents signed.
- Feed the slower machinery of change: opposition MPs mine petition topics for [Question Period](/news/question-period-the-actual-rules-and-why-nobody-has-to-answer) and [private members' bills](/news/private-members-bills-why-most-die-and-how-the-lottery-works), and committees take note of what citizens are petitioning about.</p>
<p>The realistic model is this: a petition is an **on-record instrument**, not a lever. It converts diffuse public concern into two durable artifacts — a certified statement of what petitioners want, and an official statement of what the government says about it. On its own, that changes nothing. Combined with press attention, committee work, and eventually votes — the things this site tracks — it's one of the few pieces of parliamentary machinery a citizen can operate without being elected first.</p>
<hr />
<p><small>
Originally published by <a href="https://parliamentaudit.ca/news/petitions-to-parliament-how-e-petitions-work-and-what-they-can-achieve">Parliament Audit</a>
under the <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND 4.0</a> license.
<img src="https://parliamentaudit.ca/api/republish-beacon?slug=petitions-to-parliament-how-e-petitions-work-and-what-they-can-achieve" alt="" width="1" height="1" />
</small></p>
</article>