Conservative myth #2 – A minority defeat in the House is an automatic election

Under the Westminster model, the party that is able to maintain the confidence of the House of Commons gets to form the government. This means that if a governing party loses the confidence of the house, the government must resign. Usually this results in an election since the remaining parties generally aren't in a cooperating mood. This isn't always the case though and it is not unheard of in the Canadian case or the Commonwealth Westminster case either, just rare.

A big part of this myth is that people misunderstand the term "Responsible Government". In the Westminster context, responsible government means that the government is responsible to the House of Commons, not the voter. This technically means that the House of Commons selects the government. The voter's part in this is selecting the members of the House of Commons. Now if the majority of the elected members of the House of Commons belong to one party, it is very likely that they will select their party to form the government, though this is not a requirement. Generally if no party has a clear majority, the party with the largest number of seats will form the government in a minority situation. At this point it is the duty of the government to maintain the confidence of the elected members of the House of Commons.

If a government fails to maintain the confidence of the House, it must resign. Usually an election follows at this point as the other parties sense blood and the possibility of gaining seats. I say usually as most minority governments don't engineer their own defeat less than two months after the last election. On average 18 months go by, in which time the governing party has done a fair bit to have to answer for and it would be difficult to get the other parties in the house to cooperate since they have an incentive to go back to the electorate. For non-confidence votes following close to an election however, if another party can cobble together enough support to gain the confidence of the house there is no legal, constitutional or even moral need to return to the voters. All the parties involved have to do is show that they have enough support in the House to form a government.

The final nail in this myth's coffin is that Stephen Harper himself was willing to do the same thing back when Paul Martin was Prime Minister. The fact that the Tories suddenly don't like this is that now the shoe is on the other foot. The average Tory supporter has to realize that rules are for everyone, not just non-Tories.