i'm not joking, here.

it's unprecedented. but it should trigger an election. i think i said something about this months ago, but don't ask me to remember how i framed it.

we all knew that trudeau wasn't usually the smartest person in the room. but, he may have just found a way to take his own majority government down, mid-mandate. that's like drowning in the desert. if there's natural selection in politics, he deserves a darwin award.

it really should trigger an election...

wait...

if the senate votes down the budget, that should trigger an election.

i mean, this doesn't happen in this country. but that should be the result...

canada doesn't have a collaborative budget amendment process. the government presents the budget. it might get slightly modified in committee, but it probably won't. it will just get passed. and, if it doesn't get passed, it means that the government is unable to command the confidence of the house, and an election is required.

it should follow that if the government can't command the confidence of the senate, there should be an election as well. although, as mentioned, this is crazy talk, in this country.

this is the right article for the topic, but i just want to add a sobering thought of my own: the question of whether trudeau's senate amendments will outlive him or not reduces to how responsibly they abuse their power (for any use of  power, in context, is an abuse of it). i'm convinced that this is a kind of an insane ploy to let him promise the sky at election time and get shot down between elections, and insofar as that is true it is just a waste of everybody's time. but, no future government is going to be obligated to entertain the whims and fancies of a senate full of unelected independents that was appointed as some kind of twisted joke.

undoing this mess that he's made of the senate may very well be the first thing that his successor does - even or perhaps especially if that successor is a liberal.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/mr-trudeaus-frankensenate-its-alive-and-its-dangerous/article35309120/