[Info-vax] Completely OT: Frank Lloyd Wright

[Phillip Helbig---undress to reply]

In article <50713fdf$0$996$c3e8da3$e074e489 at news.astraweb.com>, JF Mezei
<jfmezei.spamnot at vaxination.ca> writes: 

> > (An exception are parliamentary positions, where parliament is forced to 
> > debate the topic if a certain number of signatures are obtained, and 
> > some parliaments have an online version of this.)
> 
> In the case of the UBB issue in Canada, it was a combination of an
> on-line petition which grew very fast to 500,000 "signatures", the
> media's attention to this movement and a formal challenge sent to
> cabinet (done by me !)  to overturn the CRTC decision which caused the
> government to heed the public's pressure and ask the CRTC to overturn
> its decision.

OK.  The main point is that someone in power decided to overturn the 
decision.  This is a bit different from "we have x signatures, so the 
government must concede to our demands".

Still, 500,000 is much less than half the population of Canada.  I 
sincerely hope that it is not SUFFICIENT to collect 500,000 signatures 
to get a law changed.

> On-line petitions cannot be formally presented to parliament. There are
> written guidelines  and on-line petitions don't fit those. However, just
> because a petition cannot be deposited in parliament, it doesn't mean
> that politicians cannot discuss the issue and point to how many
> canadians have asked government to look into the issue.

Of course.  However, writing directly to representatives probably 
creates a better impression.

In some countries, there have long been parliamentary petitions, i.e. a 
certain number of signatures requires the parliament to debate it.  Some 
parliaments now have an online version of these.

> In the above case, the organisation which ran the on-line petition has
> good relations with the media and did many interview and gacve them
> daily numbers showing how fast the movement was growing and this forced
> the government to  take the issue seriously when the formal petition was
> filed.

OK.  However, do we WANT policy to be made by organizations which have 
good connections to the media?  Even if it came out like you want in 
this case, you have to ask yourself with what justification you could 
oppose a similarly initiated change which you DON'T want.