Let me begin by saying that not only is Professor Hogg wrong, but he's not yet on the Supreme Court of Canada.
You as legislators have to take into account the risks entailed in passing legislation. If one of those risks includes the potential for legislation to be struck down by the Supreme Court of Canada, with the attendant consequences of the legitimacy or the legality of sitting senators and the legitimacy or the legality of legislation being passed, that is a serious risk that you as legislators have a fundamental duty to address and not take the word of just one law professor, no matter how eminent he is, or not take our opinions, no matter how eminent we may think we are.
One of the fundamental things that you as legislators have to do is to take into account the potential risks that the country will face from your actions, and this is one area where I think it would be negligent in the extreme not to take into account the potential risks that flow from such legislation, in terms of gridlock, in terms of potential constitutional challenges, and in terms of this legislation being unconstitutional from the get-go, as my colleagues have just said.