This week the Post has examined the implications of the Conservative government's plan to reform Canada's Senate. In this, the last of three instalments in our series, Adam Radwanski advocates abolishing the Upper Chamber entirely.

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I recently made the mistake of explaining to a few colleagues why Dalton McGuinty's pitch to eliminate the Senate is not such a bad idea.

There were only two good arguments for the Upper Chamber, I said. One, it produces some decent reports and occasionally improves legislation; two, it's a fairly harmless dumping ground for patronage appointments, which are inevitable under any government. But the first function could more efficiently be performed by contracting out to think-tanks and other independent outfits, and the second is an awfully cynical reason to maintain a branch of government.

I'd barely gotten the words out before the rebukes came. Regional representation! How could I have forgotten the very reason the Ontario Premier wants to do away with the Senate: It counterbalances Ontario's "disproportionate" power in the Commons.

Frankly, I gave little thought to regional representation because the Senate has been useless at providing it.

Yes, next to the House of Commons the Senate provides a more even distribution of seats among provinces regardless of their population. But whether or not that's a good thing - and I'd argue that a Lower House that gives tiny PEI four seats already moves far enough beyond representation by population - its value is more symbolic than practical.

If ever the Senate's ability to curb regional tensions was put to the test, it was during the dozen years of Liberal rule that came to an end last month. Particularly during the short-lived Paul Martin era, the country appeared to be pulling in several directions at once - the West alienated, Newfoundland pulling down flags, Ontario resentful that it was being taken for granted.

Not once during that period did the aggrieved parties pause, collect their thoughts, and pronounce that maybe things weren't so bad, because we're all on a roughly equal footing in the Upper Chamber. On the contrary, the only time the Senate and regional grievances intersected was when Alberta complained - frequently - that its wishes were being trampled by prime ministers who refused to appoint the province's elected "senators in waiting."

The idea that the Senate as presently constructed can prevent the needs or wishes of individual provinces from being overlooked is a fallacy. To begin with, its most important work tends to come on big-picture issues - in particular, the work done by a select few senators who use committees to steer debate on matters such as health care and defence. Rarely will revenue distribution or other matters directly affecting individual provinces' interests fall under the Senate's purview.

Also, those who sit in the Upper Chamber readily lose touch with the pulse of the land, having no constituents to answer to.

And then there's the most obvious difficulty. Governments, succumbing to the arrogance that follows years in office, tend to steamroll provinces that didn't vote for them (as the Liberals did by the end of their reign). One way they do this is by appointing their cronies to the Senate, paying no regard to whether or not they will represent the region their Senate seat is allocated to.

Would an elected senate cure these ills? A few, sure. But senate reform is one of those things, sort of like home renovations, that sounds like a fun idea until you consider what it would actually involve.

Turning the Senate into a second body of elected representatives looking to stake out their turf would create an endless number of stalemates between the two houses. Moreover, in the too-clever-by-half model being advanced by Stephen Harper, in which constitutional reform is bypassed by having the prime minister base his appointments on senate votes in each province, we'd be creating a sort of super-MP. By merit of their democratic selection, senators would be lent considerably more legitimacy and thereby empowered. But they would still have the job until they were 75, meaning we'd be electing candidates not to multi-year terms but to multi-decade ones. If you think those lifers would remain the tireless regional advocates needed to save supposedly underrepresented regions, rather than drift into the Ottawa culture themselves, you're kidding yourself.

In other words, the present Senate is useless, and the version being advanced by Mr. Harper has major problems. So putting the thing out of its misery becomes the most appealing option.

There is, it must be said, one very good reason to maintain the status quo. As the last round of constitutional negotiations proved, even reforming the Senate is a messy can of worms; abolishing it entirely would make Meech Lake look like a love-in.

But one day, perhaps, we'll be mature enough to hold serious debates about the future of Canadian federalism without the existence of our country hanging in the balance. And with that maturity, hopefully, will come recognition that we needn't be wedded to archaic government structures just because they seemed like a good idea in the 19th century.