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Justin Trudeau may have figured, having won a stunning come-from-behind majority, that he had a bit of time. Wrong. Indeed, a cursory review of news in recent days suggests Trudeau may actually be behind the curve.

Consider the list; it’s instructive to pull it all together in one place, and appropriate for Halloween. The Senate has 22 vacancies and is stacked with Stephen Harper appointees, a horror for the newbies if ever there was one. Trudeau is the idealistic reformer who nearly two years ago put his senators curbside, yet now will rely on them to pass his laws. Logic suggests he must quickly find a way to get some new senators appointed, in a process that will be deemed impartial and transparent and merit-based, yet not appear as though it’s been thrown together in a hurry, which it necessarily must be.

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For there are so very many laws that need passing, and un-passing, right away, it seems; not only a first budget, expected sometime in February, but also a string of past Conservative measures that are either philosophically at odds with various Supreme Court rulings or the Charter of Rights or figured in the Liberal campaign platform, such as the anti-terrorist bill C-51. The granddaddy of legislative challenges would have to be the new doctor-assisted-suicide law, mandated by the Supreme Court in early 2015 but then set aside by the Conservatives, more or less, this having been deemed too hot to handle in an election year.