Score one (or, in this case, one and a half) for sober second thought: Health Minister Jane Philpott has served notice that she’s ready to support a suggested Senate amendment to her proposed new framework for safe injection sites that would allow at least 45 days for public comment during the approval process.

She’s also willing to accept a new provision that would authorize injection site staff to offer “alternative pharmaceutical therapy” before allowing a client to use illicit drugs that they bring in from outside the facility, although she wants to change it from a “shall” to a “may.”

But she’ll advise MPs to reject outright a proposal to give her office the power to appoint a volunteer “citizen advisory committee” that would both advise the site operators on ongoing “public concern” over its presence in the community, and file yearly reports on its activities.

The amended bill could be brought back before the House as early as next week. Assuming the minister’s proposed response is adopted, the re-amended draft will head back to the Upper House.

At that point it will be up to the Senate to decide whether to insist on its original amendments, which could, in theory, lead to a parliamentary impasse. That seems distinctly unlikely, as the bill also includes new measures to combat the opioid crisis — which all parties support, at least in principle.

Meanwhile, the government already has indicated that it won’t let the Senate block its attempt to reverse changes made to the union certification process under the previous government — specifically, the secret ballot requirement, which was added under the previous Conservative government.

During the 2015 campaign, the Liberals pledged to reverse the move. The legislation as initially drafted did just that, but thanks to a last-minute alliance between Conservative senators, several Senate Liberals and a few independent senators, that provision was restored, and the bill is now back in the queue for Commons reconsideration.

And as the clock ticks down to the summer recess, the Liberals still haven’t revealed how they intend to respond to the proposed Senate rewrites of two other high-profile bills: C-7, which would bring collective bargaining to the RCMP, and C-6, which, like the union bill, also would roll back changes made under the previous government — in this case, tightening up the citizenship laws to give the minister the power to revoke it from dual nationals.

Since Team Trudeau took office in late 2015, only two bills amended by the Senate have made it to the legislative finish line. In both cases, the government accepted at least some of the proposed changes, although Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould rebuffed the most significant proposed changes to the physician-assisted dying bill, which could have triggered a standoff between the two chambers.

Under parliamentary rules, there’s no limit to how many times a bill can bounce back and forth between the House and Senate, but at a certain point, the sponsor of the bill can propose that the two chambers hold a conference to end the impasse — a practice that, as the House of Commons compendium notes, “has fallen into disuse” since the mid-century.

It may be due for a revival, what with the growing number of non-party-aligned senators and the increasing independence of the Senate itself.