I hesitate to use the example of the Charter of Rights, because, as has been pointed out previously, this is not necessarily.... I mean, how we got to the Constitution in 1982 is not uniformly seen as a good way of proceeding. But it is interesting that a couple of the western premiers--I don't know about the others--did not want to see a constitutionally entrenched charter of rights because they thought it would take away from parliamentary supremacy. It was a reasonable argument, and they were not in favour.
The federal government did extensive public opinion polling, which showed that Canadians, by a margin of about 90 to one, or now 90 to 5, were in favour of an entrenched charter of rights. Then they went to the provincial governments and said “Okay, we can go to the people on this in some way. If you want to take us on in the court of public opinion, we have the evidence that you will lose badly. So let's sit down and talk this through.”
How the public weighs in is important. But I will go back to a point I made earlier. If you want to bring the public into play on this, the sharper the alternatives or the models you're able to provide people, the better the public voice becomes. If you ask an inarticulate question, you get an inarticulate public response. That's why I would not rush getting into this.