In Canada today there are many rules/opportunities for the general public to communicate thoughts to the government. The first option would be to use pressure groups, a pressure group is a group of people that agree on the same thing and want to bring their cause to the government. It is a great option to use, because you can bring your ideas to the government and you can see how many people in your group shows how passionate people are about changing it. However this can have a drawback, because a lot of the time its just average people and they aren’t as noticed, unless they have a lobbyist to help persuade the government more. It also might not apply to the general publics best interest, for example golf recognition day in BC; the golfers of BC would appreciate it but not to many else people would really care enough for the government to really validate that. A lobbyist can greatly help a pressure groups cause, considering most of them used to be high in the government, but they also cost a lot money and sometimes the cause isn’t worth it.

The next option would to be to start a petition to try and change something. A petition is a great way to show the government how many people care about a cause in masses. The petitions have and can work, it can be seen in things like the BC HST case, enough people signed the petition to get the government to look at the tax. Some disadvantages can be the amount however because the government set numbers that need to be met in order for the petition to even be considered, which can be a problem with smaller cases. This can be considered a better way to take into the account of the entire nations needs because it can be done way easier and gain way more people joining into the movement.

Another option would be to use civil disobedience, which is the refusal/rejection of rules. In the Viola Desmond case it can be seen that this does get the governments attention a lot of the time because for someone to go and break the law you know its for a serious reason. It can have some repercussions however, it can be seen in Viola’s case even that it can get violent/ cause injury’s. Some other disadvantages to this could be that since you are breaking rules although making a statement you also have to face the consequences of breaking the law, which can lead to imprisonment.