I realize it's very precise right now, the way it is, and you're right about some of the words that were typed up. What the override would do would be to allow the Senate to retain the powers it now has. I'm sure you probably know the Senate has an absolute veto over anything coming out of the House of Commons, including a budget. It doesn't exercise that power. It sometimes threatens to do so, but it never exercises it for the simple reason that the media and the public have told them they're not legitimate because they're not elected.
To go back to your exact question, the way it would work is that if the Commons passes a bill and sends it to the Senate, the Senate would be able to alter, amend, or veto it if it couldn't meet the ultimate test of the override.
The first test of the override is for the Senate to find that it has a majority of senators from the provinces. And if it has a majority who are opposed or wish to alter the bill, then they would vote that way and it would be immediately sent back to the House of Commons. The purpose behind that is to give the House of Commons a pause, to say that while this bill may be popular with your party and your leader, it is not popular with a majority of the elected senators.
The second part of that would be that in order for the Senate to actually exercise its rights, amendment or veto, it would have to show that it had a majority of the elected representatives in the Senate constituting seven provinces out of 10, representing 50% of the population or more. That means that central Canada would not alone be able to override, but also the Senate would need to have at least one of the central provinces plus five other provinces.
So it's an extraordinary override, an extraordinarily high bar, if you will, to overcome. But at that point, the author of the override feels that it would be the simplest thing to do, and it would also be a very clear message to the House of Commons that the bill is in serious trouble, because seven provinces out of 10 and 50% of the population would want to alter it or veto it. If they could do that, the bill doesn't have to be a confidence bill of any kind.
It could simply be that the government would say it's obvious that there's as much opposition, say, to this as there was to the GST--if you remember it when it was first introduced--and they would be able to make the government either accept an amendment or simply let the bill go and redraft it, draft it to something they thought was more acceptable to the public.