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In Canada, by contrast, no such limitation exists on the Senate’s powers. While the Senate has only a U.K.-style suspensive veto over constitutional amendments — if an amendment has not passed the upper house within six months, the Commons has only to pass it again to make it law — it has an absolute veto over ordinary legislation of any kind, including money bills. (Though the latter must originate in the Commons.)

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And while convention might be thought to restrain the unelected Senate from exercising the powers it holds on paper, that has proved less and less to be the case. Recent years have seen the Senate defeat, obstruct or otherwise deny passage to bills on matters such as the regulation of unions, the Kyoto climate accord and abortion — not to mention the countless other bills that have expired, for lack of Senate approval, with the close of each Parliamentary session.

Now senators are threatening to do so again. Ten years of Conservative government have left the Tories in firm command of the upper house, primed for battle with the new Liberal majority in the Commons.

Memories of what happened when the tables were reversed — the blockade of legislation enacting the Canada-U.S. free trade deal in advance of the 1988 election, a similar blockade of the goods and services tax after it, plus various shenanigans in the early Harper years when the Liberals still controlled the Senate — have Tories vowing revenge.

Not that they will vote down just any old bill. But as Conservative Sen. Bob Runciman put it recently, “there may be some things that (Justin) Trudeau and some of his colleagues are very supportive of [but] that an overwhelming majority of Canadians are not comfortable with.” In other words, they will pick their spots for maximum partisan advantage. As another Conservative senator told The Canadian Press, “I don’t have any responsibility to pass Liberal legislation.”