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Trudeau last week made it clear it was his decision, not caucus’s.

It was reported back in 2015 that both the NDP and Liberal caucuses had simply declined to hold the votes. “Rather than vote yes or no to each of the four provisions, Liberal MPs voted during their first caucus meeting … to send the issue to the party’s biannual convention in Winnipeg next year,” the Ottawa Citizen reported. “NDP MPs had also voted … to defer the issue to a future caucus meeting.”

This quite flagrant violation of a brand-new law that passed 260-17, with both Trudeau and then NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair voting in favour, struck some of us less world-weary types as rather egregious. But it was all soon forgotten in the giddy maelstrom of second-wave Trudeaumania. Stephen Harper was gone, and all was well again. “When we talk about the Reform Act, we’re actually talking about the Conservative Reform Act,” explained NDP House Leader Peter Julian, who must have voted for it by accident. And what need had Liberals of rules empowering caucus when their leader, the world’s most enlightened man, had promised to do so as a matter of principle?

It looked to be the final humiliation for Chong’s legislation. The watered-down version that finally passed was a timid nod to the traditional Westminster principles that underpinned it — principles grounded in a time when caucus elected their leader rather than lived in mortal fear of his caprices. Two of three parties in the House just went ahead and ignored it, and admitted ignoring it, and it was clear nobody cared.

But the Reform Act popped back up Monday, ready for more abuse, and luckily people are paying attention this time. Geoff Regan, Speaker of the House of Commons, ruled on a question of privilege raised by Chong with respect to the Reform Act provisions and Celina Caesar-Chavanne’s recent departure from the Liberal caucus. Regan found that she had resigned voluntarily, and thus the point was moot; but that in any event it wasn’t his job to rule on expulsions from party caucuses or interpret the Reform Act’s provisions. No one imagines the courts getting involved. It might be an even deader letter than we realized.