Certainly Reform MPs were a model of constructive opposition next to the petulant pouters back home in the West, notably over the federal government's proposed guidelines for parliamentary approval of constitutional amendments, the so-called regional veto.

Now, there are many possible grounds for objecting to such a proposal. It's probably a bad idea for any province to have a veto over constitutional changes approved by the rest of the country, especially when this is exercised merely by jerking on the Parliament of Canada's leash. But critics in the western provinces seemed less upset that Quebec and Ontario were each getting a veto than that they - at least in their individual provinces - were not. Nor was this hostility even rooted in the principle of the equality of the provinces; rather, the Premier of British Columbia complained that his province was not also accorded the status of a region. Never mind that it would actually be harder to change the Constitution without the West's consent than before: Where under the existing formula all four provinces must be opposed to block an amendment, just two would now be needed. No, all that mattered was the insult.

Hasty and ill-judged they may be, but the federal proposals are hardly an assault on to the West, let alone a "constitutional coup d'etat," as one overheated critic declared. A sovereign Parliament may choose not to pass a constitutional amendment for any reason it likes, one of which might well be the absence of a national consensus supporting it. If it decides to codify this in law, what of it?

It's true that such a law, as Mr. Bouchard points out, could always be changed. So those who want amendments to the Constitution need not fear they would be thus rendered forever impossible. But it's also true that as a practical matter no federal government would pass an amendment today that did not have support in all parts of the country, with or without a formal resolution to that effect. So those who fear that an amendment would be rammed through over their objection can also breathe easy.

If there is a problem with the federal proposal, it is in its insistence on reserving the Constitution as a private matter for the governments of the country, federal or provincial, not in the particular regional formula it has adopted: though as Mr. Manning notes, there is something peculiarly odious in giving Mr. Bouchard a veto in his new job as Premier of Quebec. The point of a constitution is to delimit the boundaries between government and people, as well as between different levels of government. To put governments in exclusive charge of its design thus entangles them in a hopeless conflict of interest.

Give the Constitution to its rightful owners, the people, as Reform suggests, and new possibilities open up. If we wish to protect regional minorities from majoritarian abuse of power, there are other ways than through their provincial legislatures. Suppose amendments to the Constitution required the approval, not of two-thirds of the legislatures as at present, but of two-thirds of the population, in a national referendum. This level of support would be difficult to get, but not impossible, which is what you want in an amending formula. More to the point, it would give every minority, regional or otherwise, a sort of sliding-scale veto, depending on its size and cohesiveness.

If, for example, a simple majority of Quebeckers, with one-quarter of Canada's population, were to vote against a particular amendment, you'd have to get more than 72 per cent of the vote in the rest of the country for the amendment to pass. Which means it probably wouldn't pass: You can't get 72 per cent of the people in this country to agree on the time of day. If Quebeckers were really solidly opposed to the amendment, say 60 per cent, the bar would rise to 76 per cent outside Quebec.

In the same way, if two-thirds of British Columbians and Albertans voted against an amendment, it would need 75 per cent of the vote in the other eight provinces to pass. And, lest we forget, of the one-third of B.C. and Alberta voters who favoured the amendment; another advantage of this formula is to permit and encourage the formation of alliances across provincial boundaries. The myth of solidarity suggested in a single vote of a legislature will have been replaced by the reality of a diversity of views within each province.

Of course, the flaw in this proposal is that it doesn't actually name who gets to wield the veto, and so deprives particular provinces of bragging rights. But given the dog-in-the-manger performances of the past week, maybe that's just what is needed.