I simply haven't seen the issue come up. I teach a very large first-year course now. It's at the second-year level. It's called Canadian democracy. The textbook is over 600 pages. The word “prorogation” appears once in it, and it's not defined. It simply says that the Governor General has these powers to summon, prorogue, and dissolve Parliament, but in practice they're in effect exercised by the Prime Minister. That's the beginning and the end of it.
If you go through, for example, a publication like Canadian Parliamentary Review, which is written by parliamentary scientists like Ned Franks and Thomas Hall, the issue hasn't been there because it's never been used, and in my opinion now abused, the way it has been in the last 16 months, or perceived to have been used. And that's why this committee is meeting. It's inconceivable to me--five years ago--that you would be dealing with this issue.
So I haven't seen anything in the provinces.
What has happened... I recall that a hundred years ago the Liberal government in Saskatchewan was being criticized because the premier was making announcements about what would be in the budget before it was made in the House. But we've seen over the years, with the introduction of television, and--I don't know how to put it--partly the Americanization of politics, more and more of the vital things that you had responsibility for are now being done outside of the House. The Liberals demanded that we get updates from the government as a condition of passing the budget a year ago January. Well, then we started getting the updates in Kitchener and in Saint John, New Brunswick. And hey, what happened to the Parliament of Canada?
I fear that the next step is going to be that perhaps the Speech from the Throne will be on Canadian Idol or something; it's not going to be in the Canadian House of Commons.