I would just add a brief comment.
I understand and share the frustration you express. Coming from British Columbia, I hear a lot of concern about Senate reform there. One thing I would caution, though, is that there are certain things one can achieve through political practice and convention and certain things one can achieve through ordinary legislation. What one can do through legislation has its limits. What one can do through convention has its limits. Certain things can only be done through constitutional amendment.
An informal change could quite easily be undertaken by a government. They could say, “We're going to act on a list of nominees from provincial governments. We're going to break the patronage mill that we've had up until now.” There's nothing to stop the Prime Minister from saying, “I'm going to appoint after consultations with the premiers from now on.” That would be an important change to the Senate and an important change to federal-provincial relations. But if one were to bring in legislation to say that, one might run into difficulties.
This is one of the ironies of constitutional innovation. There are some things you can do informally that you cannot do once you try to write them down in law. One of the concerns I have is that the particular process that is chosen now may have problems from a legal point of view, but that's not to say there aren't other things you might do legally, as opposed to this particular process.