That misses the point. The letter of the convention also says that when it's unclear whether the government enjoys the confidence of the House, it must immediately put forward a confidence motion, as Pearson did in 1968.

Our constitutional crisis even worse than you think.

Look for Kilgour and Cadman to receive Cabinet posts next.

They'll get them 2 or 3 days after I'm guessing so that the sheeple will forget all about Cadwho and Kilwhat.

yeah in 1926 the motion was far weaker.

"Government ministers had been involved in what was going on at Customs and Excise and had used their influence

Their failure to take prompt and effective remedial action is indefensible

This practice is detrimental to the best interests of the country"

this last one was far more of a condemnation.

To be fair, it's ironic that certain elements of the right argue in favour of literal constitutional interpretation but liberal political conventional interpretation.

For myself, I take a common-sense approach: a liberal interpretation is often necessary to apply old law to new situations, and the same holds true of conventions.

The fact remains, the Liberals are presently the government only by virtue of interia and political disengagement, not law.

Harper's constitutional and leadership metal will be tested this next week. We have a government that is in non confidence. This was proven in 2 votes last week and demonstrated that the opposition controls house functions now.

We now see that by Harper (trusting) allowing Martin the time to sit illegitimately until some farcical rigged confidence vote on Thursday, and not walking out on government until the GG intervened with an election writ, Martin has bought more votes with the time. He now calims some kind of regained constitutional legitimacy to sit as government.

However, the government is still in constitutional breach by refusing a confidence vote within the specified 2 days...the non conventional act of governing after non confidence was established as a precedent now by Harper's recognition of Martin holing it off for 9 days.

Harper's duty was/is clear: he must pursue Martin as if he rules illegitimately...refuse to recognise the budget vote refuse to cooperate...actually they should not show up for the budget.

Has Harper been made a girly man by the same crass media forces that caused Manning and Day to second guess their ethical stand and cave in? Has the media spin intimidated Harper into going along with this charade of Martin's?

Or will he have the power of his conviction and stay the course in constitutionally deposing an illegitimate government sitting in contept of parliament's non confidence conventions?

"We have a government that is in non confidence"

Please cite your source. To my knowledge this MAJORITY BACKED government has not lost a vote of confidence.

Actually minority governments usually fall, when they fall, on budget items. Not other ones.

That is the norm. I know about you neocon tories and "norms". You get them from Richard Perle you know. "People need to learn (from) knew norms!"

Wouldn't it be awful if Richard Perle had ment "knomes" and you all just misunderstood?

Perhaps you naysayers should actually read Cosh's post, and the opinion it is based on, instead of wasting everyone's time, and your precious intellectual resources yacking in my comments section.

You guys are like, in Canada, right?

You don't actually HAVE a Constitution, do you?

Do the British allow that?

Following Constitutional conventions is all based on convenience, isn't it? I guess we can all allow ourselves to break laws now, when it conveniences us.