The Progressive Conservatives were re-elected with a majority government in the 1988 election and Volpe sat as a member of the official opposition for the next five years, serving as his party's revenue critic for part of this time. During the constitutional debates of the early 1990s, he suggested that the Parliament of Canada (as opposed to the executive branch of government) should assume responsibility for reformulating the terms of Canadian Confederation. He argued that parliament represented a strong cross-section of Canada's population, saying that parliamentary initiative on constitutional reform could save millions of dollars on "needless commissions".