First of all, I would like to say that I agree completely with Professor Côté.
The only legislation I can think of reduced it from lifetime to age 75, but that was with the consent of the Senate also.
I want to add one more thing to the discussion so far.
The idea that you can take a convention, as Professor Hogg and Professor Monahan have done, and try to say that it will arise over time ignores the fact that something very significant happened with the patriation reference case when Pierre Trudeau tried to repatriate the Constitution without the provincial consent. I'm sure you remember that.
The court actually said to him, “Yes, you can do that legally”--that's something people don't realize, that you can do it legally--“but there are conventions that stop you from doing it, and you have to get a substantial consent of the provinces if you're going to do that.” He was basically told you cannot do directly what you can do directly, whereas here the government is attempting to do indirectly what it can't do directly.
In my view, there's actually a convention arising out of the patriation reference case that stops them from passing this legislation in the first place. That convention kicks in right away, which stops the ability of the federal government to do this without the proper amending process and, as I've said, without the proper consultation with the provinces, including Quebec.