Excellent summarization and prognostication, being far more lucid than most media reports. Have you considered a second career as a pundit?
And the tie has gone to the government, so without Belinda crossing the floor, the government would have fallen.
And this is why that innocent little one-week delay actually violated all kinds of precedent and convention.
Martin was right that Harper’s motion was not a formal vote on no confidence. If the bill had been a money bill, the loss of the vote would have caused the government to fall. However, in the Westminster system the government is supposed to call a formal vote of confideence IMMEDIATELY at a sign that they do not have the confidence of the house. The immediate part is to prevent eactly the kind of bribery, wheeling and dealing and opportunism that took place in the week between the first motion and the vote on C48. The Liberals have played this as no big deal, because they weren’t legally bound to that vote. But the thing is, under the Westminster system there are very few things that the government is explicitly, legally bound to. Much of the workings of government are based on convention and precedent, and there is an assumption that the government will abide by that as gentlemen. Perhaps it’s a little too naive a system for the modern age.
What did it cost to keep the Liberals in power? Over 27 billion dollars in new spending in the last couple of weeks to buy the support they needed to survive today’s vote. Taxpayers get to pick up the tab for that.
I thought it was poisoned maple syrup… 
So you’re saying that Dead Old Dad is safe as long as the lock-out lasts?
Cite, please, to say that there is such a strict time-line?
The rules surrounding confidence motions are unwritten, and are more a matter of custom and practicality. Yes, the Government has to take steps to ensure that it has the confidence of the House, but there is also a strong argument that for something as serious as a confidence motion, there should be enough notice given to all the MPs to ensure that every MP who is breathing (strict standard, I know) has time to get to the House and to vote. In this case in particular, when several MPs were sick and at least one was not even in Ottawa, it makes sense to me to say that the PM gives one week’s notice that a confidence matter is coming up, to give everyone time to get there if they possibly can.
As well, even if the government has lost a confidence motion in the House, that does not mean an automatic election. A defeated government has two options: to change the government to suit the House, or to try to change the House through an election to support the government. Since party discipline has been so strong in Canada over the past century, we tend to forget the first option, but that is essentially what PM Martin has done: by adding Ms. Stronach to his Cabinet, he has changed the composition of his government to bolster its support in the House. That’s perfectly legitimate. It’s what Prime Minister Macdonald did in the old Province of Canada after a defeat in the House: he cut a deal by which Galt would join his government, bringing in the necessary votes to command a majority in the House. That deal ultimately led to the Grand Coalition with Brown, which resulted in Confederation. It’s fair to say that cutting a deal led to the creation of our nation.
Just bizzness as usual in our nation’s capital 
The CNN article that I finally scraped up (embarrasingly, U.S. media does not seem interested that the Canadian government survived by one vote today) states that this is the first time the Speaker’s vote has ever been required to sustain a government. Is this true?
That concerns me. :eek:
That’s right. I’m going by memory, but I think that there have been about a half dozen ties in the Commons since Confederation. However, none of them were confidence matters. In each of those cases, Mr. Speaker has voted to allow the matter under consideration to continue to the next stage in the proceedings.
This is the first time in our history that a federal government has survived a confidence measure on a casting vote from Mr. Speaker.
My husband, a former poli-sci major, believes that minority governments actually get a lot accomplished, because they do have to wheel and deal and make concessions to the other parties. Maybe the minority government lasting a little longer won’t be a bad thing. But as for Belinda, she’s lost any credibility she ever had with me. And that wasn’t much, as jaded on Canadian politics as I am.
You should start a weekly thread, Northern Piper - This Week In Canadian Politics. You can keep all of us slacker Canadians who want to know what’s going on but don’t trust the media informed.
Tied votes, while not that common, hapen fairly often. The Speaker stated, in his comments prior to casting the tie-breaking vote, that he was doing so on the same precedent-honoured principal on which he based his vote earlier this month to break a tie in favour of the Opposition - that it is better to continue debate than to end it. (This was a vote on second reading and the bill in question still has to go through committee and be voted on again before it passes, with further debate at each stage.)
And cutting a deal also led to the Charter of Rights. There’s Canada for you, a country built on the art of the deal. 
So after all this, we have discovered that:
Paul Martin is a politico who was able to change the composition of the house to suit his immediate needs, but is not able so far to get this Parliament to cooperate enough to get some real work done.
Steven Harper is a game theorist who thinks he is a politician (and discovered that the two are not synonymous yesterday). Not to mention that he has yet to figure out how to make Ontarians feel he would be a better prime minister than our current PM. (It sure won’t happen with the streak of temper tantrums he’s been on lately.)
I think Stephen Harper does not want to admit that he cannot win in Ontario, and the best thing for the Conservative Party would be for him to step down as leader. I just wonder if he is deluded or ignorant of that fact.
Donald Trump, Father of Confederation? :eek:
Notwithstanding my introduction of the usefully coined phrase, I think I’d feel better if we just backed slowly away from your post. Or mine. Whichever. 
He invoked a notwithstanding clause! Burn! Burn!
If you’re talking about me, I’m a she. And hey, whaddya want? I am a Canadian. Notwithstanding is my favourite preposition!
Sorry! Off to remedial gender discernment classes for me.