Ever since the collapse of Meech Lake, the one certainty that proponents of a more democratic Canada could cling to is that whatever happened, the first ministers could never ''do another Meech.'' It is now clear that, in its essentials, that is exactly what they are preparing.

Oh, there won't be another all-night session at a backwoods lodge. And there will be lots of ''consultation.'' But the chances of any meaningful popular input grow remoter by the day. Confirmation of this came with the Throne Speech. The government may resort to some form of a constitutional convention or referendum, Constitutional Affairs Minister Joe Clark said, but only ''if we need it.'' Catch that? If we need it. The people of Canada are a tool, to be used as and when it serves the interests of the government of the day.

Not that the government has any serious arguments against holding a convention. My favorite is the complaint that there is ''no agreement'' on what a constitutional convention would look like. This rather echoes F.M. Cornford's dictum that ''nothing should ever be done for the first time.'' The job of the Beaudoin-Edwards Committee, supposedly, was to sift through the various proposals and come up with a working model. If no innovation can be embarked upon unless everyone agrees on its every detail before they start, then constitutional reform itself is pretty well out of the question.

The absence of a working model, however, has the signal advantage of letting opponents take random potshots at all sorts of imagined versions of a convention. The prime minister has been particularly adept at this. A convention would not work, he says, because the government of Quebec has said it will not participate. But who needs its say-so? We would, if delegates were the nominees of the provinces, as Mulroney's argument implies. So elect them.

It may be that the people of Quebec are more interested in making federalism work than their leaders, as every poll suggests. But if not, if there are such fundamental differences they cannot bring themselves even to participate in the process, then all the more reason for the rest of Canada to meet. Le Devoir's Lise Bissonnette seems to think so.

In a similar vein, the prime minister dismisses the convention as lacking the legitimacy of a body of elected representatives, such as Parliament. Of course it would, if the members were appointed, as in some models. Elect them, and again the objection dissolves. So, too, does the concern of columnist David Frum. Constitutional change, he warns, is too complex to be left to ordinary Canadians to devise. No one is proposing we should. The ''actual work,'' as Frum advises, would be ''left to the experts.'' But Canadians would have their choice of experts - and the right to reject their handiwork if it displeased them.

This second avenue of popular input - a referendum to ratify the convention's proposals - is as important as the first. Without it, Prof. Richard Simeon would be right to predict that the organizers of a convention would be consumed with the very question the convention is, among other tasks, supposed to resolve - namely, the representation of different provinces and regions.

If the results of the convention were put to a referendum, with a majority required in each region, then the West or Atlantic Canada, veto safely in hand, could accept minority status at the convention. So, for that matter, could Quebec: the regional majority provision makes stuffing of Lucien Bouchard's cry that ''a national referendum is a mortal danger for Quebec.''

Ah, but even to hold such a convention would be self-defeating, Jeffrey Simpson cleverly argues, since it would be an admission there was something fundamentally wrong with the country, as Confederation's critics insist. ''The holding of a constituent assembly concedes the critics' major point by its every existence,'' he writes. In which case the best strategy would be to do nothing at all, since that would imply all was well. Good luck.

The Globe and Mail's editorial writers carried this argument one step further, announcing that ''Canada's democracy is under attack.'' Proponents of popular involvement in constitution-making, such as Clyde Wells, were simply ''self- serving.'' Why self-serving? Because the people might agree with him. I am not making this up. ''A one-issue-election to such a body would, in the current climate, produce a majority of Canadians who share his painfully limited perspective on the issues that face our country.''

Apparently, the non-self-serving thing to do is to force upon the majority of Canadians a perspective of the country they do not share - such as the Globe's - by means of a process that excludes them. Which makes the government's approach selfless indeed.