There are just a couple things about that. First of all, as I said at the opening, I think the process being followed here is very much second-best, and I would very much prefer a proper constitutional process.
I don't think it's purely political. I think there is a genuine fear that opening the constitutional Pandora's box would just lead us into endless debate and frustration and so on, and I pay some attention to that. That's why I think we should explore what Parliament can do in this regard.
But the other thing I want to say is, as I said, we don't know exactly what an elected Senate would be like and how it would behave and how partisan it would be, and so on and. I know that many people would say, “Oh, this is turning the Canadian Parliament into something much more like the American Congress, with two powerful legislatures”, and so on.
First of all, as I say, we're not sure about that. Secondly, I'm not sure that would be such a bad thing. We have now the tyranny of party discipline. We have the tyranny of one-party government. We have the tyranny of simple majority rule in the House of Commons. Is that so great? Maybe more and more powerful voices and so on coming at the issues from a somewhat different perspective would not be the end of parliamentary government as we know it but would be something better. I'm not predicting that, but I'm saying we shouldn't just hold onto the existing parliamentary system we have as if it's a perfect working model.