I was involved in an announcement a couple of years back in Ontario. I won't mention the minister involved, but the Ontario minister refused to participate unless the order of speaking was changed to reflect the elevated stature of a minister over a federal member of Parliament.
There was a half-hour discussion of protocol, apparently, before I arrived. It wasn't done in malice. It wasn't the actual minister who had a problem with it; it was more that the staff were trying to figure this out before we actually got there. When we found out what had happened, we were actually embarrassed for our particular teams. It went off, and it was no big deal, but nobody had this knowledge of who should speak first, and it caused grief.
Do we put enough emphasis on protocol? Is protocol not also a way of protecting tradition? I keep hearing a lot about flexibility, but not enough about protecting tradition.