REALity August, 2018 Ottawa, ON
In the fall of 2016, REAL Women of Canada drafted and launched our own federal petition on religious freedoms in Canada.
Thank you to all members and supporters who have sent us signed petitions on Religious Freedom. To date, 5800 signatures have been sent to the House of Commons.
We have been successful in obtaining signatures from all provinces. MP Michael Cooper (St. Albert-Edmonton) received 2000+ signatures from across Canada. Afterwards, we reduced the number to an average of 150 signatures in each package of petitions sent to individual MPs, trying to include signatures from the riding of the MPs. A minimum of 25 signatures is required.
Twenty-five packages of petitions have been sent to different MPs asking them to return them if they do not wish to table them. It takes about 2 months for the petitions to be certified by the Petitions Clerk. After this, the petitions can be left with the House of Commons clerk without a public statement or the MP can announce the petition in the House of Commons with a short comment of support. Both methods result in an official record in Hansard.
Unfortunately, we have not had a positive response from Liberal and NDP MPs. No petition from these groups has been tabled. There is no obligation to table a petition. The MP can wait as long as he or she wants before tabling the signatures.
Eight Conservative MPs read the petitions in the House of Commons: Michael Cooper (St. Albert-Edmonton, AB), Diane Finley (Haldimand-Norfolk, ON), David Anderson (Cypress Hills-Grasslands, SK), Dave van Kesteren (Chatham-Kent-Leamington, ON), Brad Trost (Saskatoon-University, SK), Cathay Wagantall (Yorkton-Melville, SK), Dave MacKenzie (Oxford, ON) and Ted Falk (Provencher, MB).
There are 10 other Conservative MPs who received petitions and should hopefully be interested in tabling them. In some cases, the petitions are in the process of being certified or tabled. We are still receiving petitions. Due to time constraints we have not been able to process all of them yet.
There is no time limit, so if you have not signed the petition please print it out from our website and send it to us with signatures. All signatures must be on the page containing the petition, not a separate page nor on the back of the page. Link to Religious Freedom Petition:
https://realwomenofcanada.ca/petition-to-the-house-of-commons-in-parliament-assembled/