The essence of the Internet is that it’s very open, decentralized and populist; a place where knowledge is democratized and mass collaboration is the source of power. It challenges organizations, institutions and systems that are just the opposite; human structures that are confidential or closed, centralized, designed for creating proprietary intellectual products, organized on authority principles, and where power is maintained by controlling knowledge.

So we’re witnessing a revolution spawned by the Internet that’s growing and morphing. There’s no stopping it and there can be no debate that the previous way of being organized and working that ruled last century was better (or worse.) It doesn’t really matter. The genie is out of the bottle and we need to understand how we’re going to adapt to the unanticipated events (risks) that will be driven by the new order of the Internet.

Right now, I believe that the stage is being set in the politics of Canada for a new set of entirely unanticipated events driven by this new way of doing things, made possible by Internet technologies. How this will affect regulators, more on that later, but consider the scenario that’s unfolding.

The established political process in Canada is being challenged by a remarkable pioneering MP, the Honourable Garth Turner. This contest in the political realm will undoubtedly have consequences for how authority is delegated and generally how the bureaucracy interacts with citizens.

Federal politics in Canada, I am a Canadian, has always been the politics between official parties, the Liberals, the Conservatives, the New Democrats, the BLOC, and each of these parties claims to speak for real Canadians. However, Mr. Turner presents a challenge to traditional party dominance. His success will cause others to adopt his ways. For Federal politicians, I believe he’s uncorked the bottle and the genie is loose.

What’s he done? Garth Turner has created an impressive Internet channel for “reality tv” style direct communication with the constituents in his riding. And because the channel is on the World Wide Web it’s not limited to his riding. The Web has no boundaries.

What’s the channel? It’s actually called MPtv, a sophisticated blog that uses words and videos to chronicle the process of government as well as his representation of constituents. Alone, the amount of chronicling on the site is impressive: There are over 1100 weblog commentaries over the past 2 years, comprised of 1.4 million words, 28,000 reader comments, and over 200 MPtv videos

MPtv has thousands of daily visitors many of whom are engaged in this medium. The evidence of this is the hundreds of posts on the site from citizens. The level of interaction is stunning and far exceeds the number of “letters to the editor” received by major media in Canada.

Mr. Turner also practices integrated marketing. He uses his MP household mailings to drive his constituents to MPtv to poll them on issues. In the process he captures email address, and another way to communicate with the thousands of other constituents who aren’t regular with the MPtv habit. Come next election, if the Turner formula works, the power of the party structure will be diminished as dependence on party support to get elected will be less important.

The point of this? What Garth Turner is doing with MPtv can be replicated. It is and it will be. Regulators can also learn from this and use these methods, adapted to the unique circumstances of a jurisdiction. The power of mass collaboration with constituents for the purpose of achieving regulatory excellence is entirely possible. Welcome to the new channel and the way of continuous collaboration.