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Had the speaker sided with the Official Opposition and allowed the amendment to proceed, it would have ultimately been voted on by the Senate as a whole, at which point it almost certainly would have gone down to defeat, presuming that most Senate Liberals, as well as some or all of the non-aligned senators in the chamber, would have joined forces to reject it.

In fact, that may have been precisely what the Conservatives were hoping would happen.

After all, what better way to bolster their claim that both the Senate Liberals and the recent influx of independent senators appointed through the prime minister’s ostensibly arms-length selection process are really just big-L Liberal loyalists at heart than to set up a scenario where they all rally to the defence of Team Trudeau’s tax changes?

Instead, the amendment has effectively been rendered null and void — as opposed to defeated, which is a crucial distinction from a political perspective — and the bill retroactively deemed to have been reported back without so much as a repositioned comma, now awaits only a final third reading endorsement to become the law of the land, which will likely happen by the end of the week.

Neither Harder nor the government he represents should let this procedural victory go to their heads. As long as the Conservatives control a majority at committees, they’ll be free to amend the bills that come before them, and as long as they don’t cross one of the relatively few lines — like, say, raising taxes — it will be up to the Senate as a whole to undo those changes.

Read the full text of the ruling here:

The Gargoyle is the Ottawa Citizen’s federal politics blog.