Sober second thought doesn't necessarily have to take a long time. Consider, for example, the Reform Act – which the Senate appears to be considering to death.

Conservative MP Michael Chong is the author of this private member's bill. It opens the door to limits on the now overwhelming power of party leaders over the members of a party's House of Commons caucus. It aims to empower MPs, just a little bit.

It is a well-thought-out bill, and Mr. Chong, who received a lot of push-back from the parties in response to his first draft, had to make a number of amendments it in order to get it through the House of Commons. It was grudgingly accepted by the parties, but was passed by a wide margin – 260 to 17 votes – on Feb. 25. So it automatically received first reading on the same day in the Senate.

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Since then, it has languished.

One of the bill's virtues is that it is short. The Reform Act is not a large baggy monster like the Income Tax Act or the strangely miscellaneous omnibus budget bills of which recent governments have become fond, full of enactments that have little or nothing to do with budget measures.

This bill doesn't need lengthy study in the Senate, sober or otherwise. That's because its subject is the workings of the House of the Commons, and the party nominating process for people who want to become MPs. It does not affect senators. If any bill passed in the Commons deserved to be rubber-stamped by the Senate, this is it.

Instead, the Senate put the Reform Act on a slow train. And now it's sitting on a rail siding. Why? The inaction leaves the impression that the Conservative majority in the Senate has been told to smother it in the crib. By contrast, the long, difficult, complex Anti-Terrorism Act, having been passed by the Commons just this week, is likely to be quickly hustled through and voted on.

Parliament adjourns at the end of June, and almost certainly won't return in the fall, thanks to the October federal election. Time is running out. If this deliberate delay of the Reform Act continues, the bill will die.