This article critically engages with the Canadian framing of settler colonial/decolonial politics in terms of guilt and innocence. I argue that centring innocence, even as something to be snatched away from settlers, as with the theorization of settler moves to innocence, can corrupt the practice of moral responsibility. Furthermore, I argue that the desire for and expectation of innocence, in the face of structural injustices such as settler colonialism, are illusionary and that complicity is widespread. In contrast, I follow Iris Marion Young's focus on political responsibility, but I argue that public collective actions need not be as centred as she suggests. Given the nature of settler colonialism and of coloniality, I argue for the acknowledgment of the political significance of daily individual acts and for the cultivation of dispositions that disrupt unjust structures, such as a disposition to transgress.

The Supreme Court's recent invocation of the “constitutional architecture” in the Senate Reform Reference has led a number of scholars to question the status of constitutional conventions in the legal, as opposed to political, constitution. Has the Court, without expressly saying so, transformed at least some conventions into constitutional law? This would be a serious rupture, not only from existing precedent on the justiciability of conventions but also from the traditional understanding of conventions as binding political rules. In light of this recent scholarly debate, an exploration of the profound consequences of entrenching conventions in the legal constitution is warranted, as it implicates the meaning of constitutional conventions, their creation, their relation to law, and their enforcement. Judicial entrenchment of conventions would be a dangerous violation of the separation of powers and would have negative consequences for the functioning of Canada's system of government and for the future of constitutional change.