I think one thing we're perhaps avoiding a bit--and it might be an issue if the Supreme Court were to really explore this in the kind of detail that Professor Heard just mentioned--is the wrong we're trying to right here. This is a completely undemocratic Senate. It is appointed by prime ministerial power, which is essentially unlimited. As Ron Watts pointed out, it is utterly unable to perform the balancing and regional representation that senates are designed in most federations to perform and so on. We have a failed institution here.
If one had to say what's wrong with Canadian federalism, we would say it was this aspect of it, this inability of the central government fully to represent all Canadians and fully to be an arena in which the interests of regions and the national majority would be negotiated and accommodated. So that would be part of the discussion as well.
The Supreme Court has said, as it did in the secession reference, that federalism is the fundamental Canadian constitutional value. We have an anti-federal Senate. It said that democracy is the fundamental Canadian value. We have an undemocratic Senate. This is why I want to explore all the different possibilities. We want to move off an institution that is a blot on the Canadian political system at the moment.