Former federal agriculture minister Ralph Ferguson wants to know if and why Canadian rules allow import of fruit, vegetables and milk that contain residues of chemicals banned for use in Canada.
The Winnipeg-based Beyond Factory Farming Coalition wants to know what research the federal government has done to assess the environmental and health implications of hormone use in livestock.
Sometime within the next few months, both will receive answers from Ottawa, satisfactory or otherwise.
The formal answers will come because both used the 12-year-old environmental petition program that environment and sustainable development commissioner Ron Thompson reported last year is increasingly popular with Canadians.
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“Environmental petitions are a simple, unique feature of our parliamentary democracy,” he wrote in his annual report to Parliament tabled Oct. 30.
“Petitions have increased in efficiency and sophistication since the process was established in 1995.”
Thompson said a survey of petitioners and the civil servants who are assigned to respond to the petitions has found frustration and satisfaction with the program.
“Petitioners value the petitions process since it provides a forum for voicing their concerns and assures them of a formal response,” he wrote.
“However, over half of petitioners surveyed said that they did not receive the response they had expected.”
The responses often were vague or merely recitations of existing government policy.
And since 2004, government performance in responding has been slipping, Thompson reported.
“We found that responses have become less complete over this period,” he wrote.
“In 2004, some 24 percent of petition responses did not answer the questions posed or answered only partially. By 2006, this figure was 41 percent.”
However, responses at least were timely.
The legislation requires a response within 120 days and during the past year, almost all departments including Agriculture Canada provided an answer in time. With eight petitions answered in 2006-07, Agriculture Canada was one of the most popular departments with petitioners.
Thompson identified lack of resources as one of the problems facing departments on the front line of answering questions.
“Departments have a statutory duty to respond to petitions but they lack dedicated resources for dealing with the unforeseen workload in preparing responses.”
As well, most questions require responses from a number of departments and there is little organized co-ordination within government to prepare answers.
An example was a recent petition from Gerald Comeau of Fredericton, who complained about the environmental effects of flax straw burning. What is the government doing about it? The answer was that the government supports work being done by the flax industry to find new economic uses for the straw, including as a raw material in biofuel production.
It took collaboration between departments of agriculture, environment, industry and natural resources to develop the detailed four-page response.
