I'm not sure I'll answer as fully as maybe you would like me to, but first I'd say that Canadians now react very strongly to the use of the power to prorogue, and it's quite surprising, because there have been many prorogations in Canada's history--more than 105. So why is it that the population now reacts so strongly when prorogations happen, as was the case last December and January?
It might be because now the population feels that the power of the executive has become too strong vis-à-vis the power of Parliament. I would say that many Canadians--not all of them, of course, because some people are not interested in these questions and are too cynical about Parliament itself to really defend it or protect it--are extremely preoccupied by the overwhelming power of the executive compared to that of Parliament. They would like some kind of limits on the executive powers.
Some people, I would say, do support the idea that this Parliament brings limits to the power to prorogue, that is, the power of the crown but mostly of the government, as you know, and of the Prime Minister. But then I would say to be very careful, because this is still a prerogative, and it should stay as it is, in my view. Moreover, I said before that it has some implicit or tacit constitutional protections, so I think we should be very careful not to react too spontaneously, but to examine all these questions in depth, as this committee is doing, without any pressure from the outside.
This being said, what is interesting, though, is to see that in the United Kingdom there is an annual prorogation. Can you believe it? The country that gave birth to Canada is a country that now has an annual prorogation, but there's not the same political context. I would say the party line, the party discipline, is not what it is in Canada. In Canada the party discipline is stronger than what exists in the United Kingdom. Because of the party discipline and the power of the Prime Minister and the executive over the members of Parliament, the population would like to see the situation being reversed and Parliament being reaffirmed vis-à-vis the government, and if that's the case, then an annual prorogation would not be the solution at all. It would be worse because it would strengthen the power of the executive, vis-à-vis Parliament, when most Canadians want the opposite.