// PC GAMER — GAMING
A public petition to save BioWare has drawn enough signatures that the Canadian government will at least have to think about it: 'This is absolutely possible,' MP says
I wouldn't be ordering food for the resurrection party just yet, but the petition has enough signatures to at least oblige a response.
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A lot of attention has been focused on the "Save Mass Effect" petition on Change.org, which has now drawn over 300,000 signatures collectively calling on Electronic Arts to make a new Mass Effect game.
But there's another petition in the works, asking the government of Canada to save BioWare—the people, not the product—and while it only has a tiny fraction of names attached to it, it's enough that the Canadian government will actually have to look at it.
Unlike the Change.org petition, this one is official, in that it's actually part of the legislative process: Public petitions like e-7989, as it's formally known, are "used to draw attention to an issue of public concern. They ask the House of Commons, the Government of Canada, a minister or a member to take or refrain from taking some action."
As I write this, the petition is nosing toward 3,000 signatures, not a huge amount but enough to trigger the next step in the process. Once an electronic petition has at least 500 valid signatures—that is, the signature of a Canadian citizen or resident—it's certified, at which point the Member of Parliament representing the petitioner can either present it during Routine Proceedings, or file it with the Clerk of the House.
There are various other rules and norms in place, but the important bit is that "the government must respond to every petition presented to the House within 45 calendar days of its presentation or filing with the Clerk." Electronic petitions can be short-circuited by the dissolution of Parliament: Paper petitions can be re-presented to the House even if they were certified by a previous Parliament, but electronic petitions are wiped and must be restarted afresh.
The good news for committed videogame optimists is that, for many reasons, the current Canadian Parliament is not going to be dissolved anytime soon, so this petition to free BioWare from the fetters of EA isn't going to just die on the vine. But, also for a variety of reasons, it's not liable to lead to BioWare's salvation, either.
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For one thing, while New Democratic Party leader Avi Lewis expressed support for the idea of government intervention shortly after BioWare was closed by its new owners, the NDP is not in power right now and its attention is currently consumed by rebuilding after a decade of disastrous leadership. The government of Canada is also focused on other things at the moment, for instance the badly frayed relationship with our erratic, nuclear-tipped neighbor to the south, and while cheerleading companies like BioWare is great PR (and the current governing party loves that stuff), it's not something that's likely to inspire actual action.