Realistically, nothing short of a constitutional amendment will have any weight to it. But part of the reason I started the group in the first place was to put a stop to it, not having this become routine. Because it happened twice in two years, it was very dangerous.
If this becomes the new attitude--and I'm thinking beyond the current government--some day we will have the Liberals in government again, and for them to take what has happened before and keep going with it.... That's the general excuse we see in government, that the last guys did the same thing, or they did worse.
So they would say the buck stops here; let's try to get back to something that makes a bit more sense and understand what the spirit of Parliament is in a democracy. I think that as long as the public has the interest and the capacity to be involved.... And that's the great thing about social media and social networking: it empowers Canadians in a way that probably wouldn't have been possible 15 or 20 years ago.
You see it in other cases too. There was opposition to the sale of NB Power. They had very large demonstrations in New Brunswick about it. They had a very large Facebook component as well. I know in Ontario there was an issue about young drivers and again a lot of organizations went online. So I think this is a new era. And I would stress again that even if there is no new legislation or a Standing Orders change, part of what's going on today is establishing this convention. There is a recognition that prorogation is the issue, that it's absolutely necessary, but there are times when it should or should not be used.