Thank you.
It's heartening to me that Mr. Reid and Professor Mendes could at least come together on a final point of agreement, in that conventions under our current constitutional framework do exist.
In my first two-part question I guess the answers were mostly concentrated on the deadlock issue, and we delved a little bit into convention. But it is curious to me.... I am a person with legal training; sometimes it's an asset and sometimes it's not. But in this case Professor Hogg—again I'll put it to you as far as I understood it, and I have his verbatim testimony here—was very clear that the convention that exists now with respect to the Governor General appointing senators is really that the Prime Minister suggests names to the Governor General. And no matter how he comes up with those names—out of a hat, coin flip, phone call, selection process—nothing changes. That is what Professor Hogg said, in a nutshell.
Professor Whyte took the view that he was perhaps incorrect because he took too much of a literal, black letter approach to the sections of the Constitution as they meld with the conventions. I'll give you a chance to maybe elaborate.
I would like all three of you to address the question of whether Professor Hogg is on solid ground in that respect.
Secondly, is he correct when he says that it's unsure as to whether a new convention will evolve with the selection process? We all seem to be going down the road, Professor Whyte in particular, that there will be a new convention, that the elections will mandate that the Prime Minister nominate the senators through the Governor General. Professor Hogg in fact said in his testimony that there may be a contaminated election where that may not be the case. Will there be a new convention, if this goes through, that will bind the Prime Minister, and will it therefore become constitutional law?
The second, minor point, if we had a point: Do you think it's therefore important that when we select Supreme Court judges, we ask them their interpretation of whether the Constitution is convention-based or black-letter-based, or whether it should be interpreted in the spirit or be black-letter-interpreted?
Just two light questions.