I suspect that most Canadians don’t know. I didn’t, until I read James Bow’s explanation.
This remaining uncertainty makes this vote not a vote of confidence, but a dry run for the real vote of confidence. The actual vote of confidence (and there’s more than one) comes later this week or early next, and you can be sure that the Liberals will have a full house for those.
Here’s the CBC’s explanation of how one brings down a government.
This is the coolest thing I saw today. Monte Solberg, a Conservative MP, blogged the vote from his Blackberry. Mind you, I wouldn’t want my MP blogging too often from the floor of the House. I’d prefer they, you know, concentrated on governing the nation.
And speaking of national crises, how come we can barely beat the Ukrainians?
DarrenBarefoot.com 
How you vote: you stand up, you sit down… you wait for the other 307 people to stand up and sit down.
Also note that the opposition doesn’t govern, they keep the government to account… which is what they tried to do (in vain) yesterday.
I wasn’t specifically disparaging Mr. Solberg–I was just musing that it’d be cool if MPs blogged from the floor. But maybe not all that often.