Mr. Speaker, I am envisioning the nature of the telephone call that would have to occur under the present circumstances, before we get back answers to our Senate reference question, in which we try to figure out how much provincial consent is needed. If he said, “Hello Mr. Premier, it is the Prime Minister here. I am seeking your consent on an amendment, but I don't know whether I need it or not because we don't know which amending formula applies to the particular amendment I am proposing”, he would look pretty foolish.
What the Prime Minister and the government have done is submit a series of questions that would allow us to determine. These six questions to the Supreme Court, one of which I just read a moment ago, ask the Supreme Court to determine which amending formula applies to which kind of Senate change: electing senators; choosing the length of terms of senators so they do not stay until age 75 but serve some fixed term; whether we want to pass legislation that makes terms renewable or non-renewable; how much consent we need from how many provinces, should it be all of them, 7/50, or none at all, because it will be none at all in certain cases; removing property qualifications and so on.
These are question on which we need to resolve what the process would be for making the changes before we can actually make those changes.
The Supreme Court starts its hearings on these questions next month. It has been receiving factums from the various participants, including the federal government and various provinces, over the past several months. They are available online and I encourage the member to read them. They are interesting, but we will not know what the Supreme Court thinks until it makes its ruling.
Unfortunately, the answer to the member's question of what that conversation should be between the Prime Minister and premiers will not happen until we have the answers about the questions he should ask.