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Sometimes the Commons defers; sometimes the Senate does. But there is no assurance that a crisis can be dodged forever. It is not at all clear the inmates of the Upper House acknowledge any limitations on their role, as a body of appointees, versus that of the elected Commons. Nor do their apologists: for every one who dismisses concerns that the new “independent, merit-based” Senate might veto the Commons as fear-mongering, there is another who wonders why anyone would object if they did.

But if senators are in danger of overstepping their bounds procedurally, that is not to say their criticisms are without merit in substantive terms.

Photo by THE CANADIAN PRESS/Fred Chartrand/File

The excise tax dispute might seem a small matter — there have been calculations that it would cost consumers perhaps an extra couple of dollars annually apiece — but the principle that taxes should not be raised except by the express authority of the people’s elected representatives is an ancient one, and one the elected representatives might themselves have been a little more eager to defend.

More serious are the issues that prompted senators to demand the bill — another of those enormous omnibus bills the Liberals had promised to eschew — be divided: specifically, to enable consideration of legislation to create the new Canada Infrastructure Bank on its own, rather than as part of the overall budget package.

This would be advisable simply as a matter of proper parliamentary procedure; that the Commons failed to do so is all the more lamentable in light of the many questions that have been raised about the bank.