Kathleen Wynne made a strange declaration the other day: Ontario now wants to salvage the Senate.

Without warning — and at the worst possible time — the premier has reversed Ontario’s long-standing policy of abolishing the upper chamber. Wynne is having afterthoughts about our chamber of sober second thought.

She wants to resuscitate a dying institution that has resisted reincarnation for decades. Just when it has sunk to its lowest ebb of credibility and legitimacy over the expense account scandals of roving senators.

Why suddenly abolish our abolition position? Of all the problems facing Ontario, Senate reform is surely at the bottom of the list.

Unless you’re tone deaf.

Beware the sleeper issue of Senate reform. When constitutional ambitions arise in a politician, they often foreshadow a fall.

These days, the premier is deftly distancing herself from the legacy of her unpopular predecessor, Dalton McGuinty. But her latest disavowal — of McGuinty’s opposition to the Senate — takes us in the wrong direction.

Here’s how the former premier succinctly framed Ontario’s position in 2011:

“We think the simplest thing to do is abolish it and I think, frankly, to reform it in any substantive way is just not possible,” McGuinty declared after sussing out his provincial counterparts. “Based on my discussions with other premiers . . . (reform) is not going to happen.”

He also stated the reality of present-day politics: “I just don’t think we need a second, unelected, unaccountable body.”

Did Senate purists rise up across Ontario after McGuinty uttered those words? Did the Mike Duffy defence fund spring into action?

Seems there was one dissenter sitting in McGuinty’s cabinet all along. Now, after biding her time in silence, Wynne wants to have a national conversation and negotiation:

“I actually believe there is a role for a chamber of second, sober thought,” the new premier told reporters recently.

It so happens that Ontario will be hosting the annual meeting of premiers this year, and Wynne allowed that she “would be interested in engaging” her counterparts on the issue.

Later, as McGuinty listened quietly from his legislature desk, Wynne mused in greater detail about having a “conversation across the country. . . I believe that it is possible to reform the Senate.”

Too late. On the very day Ontario suddenly talked it up, Saskatchewan was shooting it down: Premier Brad Wall announced that he now favours abolition.

Western premiers have long sought a stronger voice in the Senate. The upper chamber is anachronistic not only because of its discredited patronage appointments and free-spending senators, but its outdated representation: New Brunswick has barely 2 per cent of the population yet boasts 10 of the Senate’s 104 seats (9.6 per cent.) B.C., with 13 per cent population, is relegated to a mere six seats. Ontario, with 40 per cent of the population, holds less than one-quarter of the seats.

Saskatchewan now accepts that equal representation for all provinces is a non-starter. Quebec politicians are not about to make any concessions diluting their seat total, given their ongoing grievances over patriation of the Constitution.

“I just fundamentally do not believe that we will ever meaningfully reform the Senate,” Wall explained.

Now that he’s a convert to abolitionism, Saskatchewan’s premier says he will push the issue when he meets the premiers here next month. He just wasn’t expecting Wynne to pull in the other direction.

Ontario is preparing a legal brief to the Supreme Court in advance of hearings on Senate reform requested by the federal Conservative government. But it’s hard to fathom Wynne’s sudden enthusiasm.

A national conversation is no solution for this moribund institution — it’s a dead end.

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Almost everyone agrees the status quo in the Senate is unacceptable. Most would agree that a reformed Senate is unattainable.

Reforming an upper chamber, like restructuring a house, is far more ambitious than merely demolishing it. That’s why abolition is the solution.

Martin Regg Cohn's provincial affairs column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. mcohn@thestar.ca , twitter.com/reggcohn .

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