Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament facebook over 100,000 members as polls show opposition to Harper decision

The Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament facebook group had reached 100,561 members shortly before three a.m. ET  Friday while two polls released Thursday showed that a majority of Canadians were opposed to Prime Minister Stephen Harper's decision to prorogue Parliament.

Also on Thursday, The Economist, a very respected magazine slammed Harper's decision asserting that he was counting on Canadians' complacency as he rewrites the rules of his country's politics to weaken legislative scrutiny.

I asked political actvist Colin Le Fevre to give his views on the Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament group reaching more than 100,000 members.  He cautions that simply joining a group is not enough to briing ablout change.

Here are his comments:

"I think the group has been absolutely successful in the fact that it has gained a huge number of members in such a short time, but we as a movement need to be weary of the numbers in terms of assuming we have a committed movement.

"It is very likely many people have visited the group once, joined, and feel their voice has been heard. They are unfortunately wrong. We have to be honest with ourselves here, no change is going to come from a large number of people in a Facebook group.

"We need to use the medium to mobilize people. If every person in that group writes their MP, or donates money or time to a political party, or attends a rally there will be significantly more influence from this group then from the group standing alone. But without people doing this, the Facebook group will be utterly useless.

"To summarize, we need people to act, not just join the group, if we want to make any successful change."
Here is link to Colin Le Fevre's web site: http://www.colinlefevre.ca/

Olli Matikainen explains why he joined the group and became involved. Olli is a former student of mine.

Here are Olli's comments.
"I heard about the Proroguing by Harper on CBC radio when it happened, and I was left wondering "why is the Canadian Parliament being again put out of commission?". When it happened a year ago, I was able to understand the logic used by Harper "to some degree"... I mean he was fighting for his political life, and was desperate to save his government... so while I don't agree with Harper's policies, I could understand the logic of proroguing a year ago.

:This time, the reason provided for proroguing strikes me as extremely lame (the government needs time to figure out the economic plan given that the economy seems to be improving???). This reinforces my impression that Harper is simply arrogant, and is not really interested in the voice of the people... he's got an agenda, and we're going to get it whether we like it or not.

"So when I saw your notes and comments on Facebook re. proroguing, it touched a nerve (in a good way!) and so I joined. While I don't consider myself a political junkie, I do pay attention to the "goings on" of the national government, and I'm quite fascinated in how the internet and Facebook provide a forum for the "average joe" to learn and contribute to Canada's politics."


Here is link to a poll taken by the Angus Reid group taken for the Toronto Star.
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/747532--majority-condemn-harper-move-poll-finds?bn=1

Here is link to a poll taken by Ekos for CBC News.
http://www.cbc.ca/politics/story/2010/01/07/ekos-poll-prorogue.html

Here is link to article in The Economist.
http://www.economist.com/world/americas/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15211862&source=hptextfeature