Citizens Petitioning Parliament for Action?

Did you  notice  two very experienced parliamentarians of very opposing sides publicly agreeing, recently, upon a potentially significant improvement into our country's democracy? Preston Manning and Ed Broadbent are supporting a current NDP member, Kennedy  Stewart's effort to require parliamentary debates upon certain issues of concern by ordinary citizenry.  Some 20 other members, including two Conservatives have also agreed that such proposal should be considered. Manning is a former Reform Party, Canadian Alliance  leader, who left office back in 2002, while Broadbent was leader of the federal NDP party for many years.
How it would work is basically, this: when some 50,000 citizens (say) signed online a petition that  a certain matter must  be decided by their parliament, such petition would be presented. If 5 (say)  elected members agreed that such was worthwhile (was not frivolous, for example), then within a certain time period such matter must be brought  up,  debated,  and  concluded one way or the other by parliament.
This is not exactly a citizen's referendum , as within the ideal of Direct Democracy activists (like myself), but certainly goes a long way to-wards reducing the considerable  frustrations created by the current process - which is so party-led, and publicly absent.
A 25 citizen petition method requiring, supposedly, similar results actually goes back historically many decades, but has not been followed in any effective manner within living memory.
A committee would be set up to examine the details  over a period of perhaps one year.
The issue is expected to be brought up before the summer.
An article on this subject was printed in the Vancouver Sun newspaper on Feb. 26.