Let me ask you a different question regarding the Jennings test. My own teacher regarding constitutional conventions was the writings of Albert Venn Dicey, a generation or two before Sir Ivor Jennings, and I haven't read Jennings, so let me just ask this question. He lays out his three rules, one of which is whether the key actors in the precedents felt they were bound by a rule. This appears to assume that conventions grow over time and that they can't be eroded, so I have to ask this question.
We today face a Prime Minister who says, “I reject a convention that other provincial actors in Canada and other actors across the Commonwealth have accepted exist. I say that whatever they felt bound them, I am not bound to go to the people. I have my mandate from the 2015 election. I will proceed forward without a referendum.” He then goes on to criticize referenda in various ways, but let me ask the question. How does all this work when you are faced with an actor who takes that point of view toward what appears to have been an established convention?