OTTAWA - Canada's 10-month-old Liberal minority government lost a key censure vote in Parliament on Tuesday but ignored opposition demands that it resign and call an election.

The official opposition Conservative Party denounced the government's refusal to quit and said it would take unspecified "additional steps" on Wednesday to address what one top party legislator called a full-blown constitutional crisis.

Earlier, by a vote of 153-150, the House of Commons approved a motion instructing a committee to ask for the resignation of a government which has been hit hard by a corruption scandal.

"Goodbye!" shouted one opposition legislator as the result of the vote was announced. But the Liberals made it clear they would be going nowhere.

"We will continue to govern on behalf of Canadians," Liberal minister Tony Valeri told Parliament to catcalls and howls of outrage.

The opposition said the motion clearly expressed a lack of confidence in Prime Minister Paul Martin and should trigger an election, but the Liberals said it was only a procedural matter.

Earlier in the day Liberal officials said that, in any case, opposition parties would get the chance to put forward formal confidence motions at the end of May.

Governments in Canada have to resign if they are defeated in the House of Commons over their budgets or on a formal confidence vote.

"Mr. Martin's behavior has gone from dithering to desperate and now to dangerous and this is a very serious situation. Let me assure you that we will take additional steps to deal with this situation tomorrow," Conservative leader Stephen Harper told reporters, but gave no further details.

Fellow Conservative parliamentarian Jay Hill declared "Parliament is over after tonight" and suggested the party could boycott the House of Commons.

"We're into a situation of full-blown constitutional crisis," he told Reuters.

Gilles Duceppe of the separatist Bloc Quebecois said one option would be to visit Governor-General Adrienne Clarkson, who represents Queen Elizabeth, Canada's head of state, and formally ask her to dissolve Parliament and call an election.

The continuing political uncertainty is depressing the Canadian dollar, which immediately dipped against its U.S. counterpart after the vote.

To try to bring down the government, the Conservatives and the Bloc have seized on a scandal involving allegations of kickbacks to the Liberal Party in return for government contracts.

In addition, they say a Liberal spending blitz of close to $20 billion CDN in the last three weeks jeopardizes Canada's standing as the only member of the Group of Seven industrialized nations to be running a budget surplus.

Valeri had earlier played down the impact of Tuesday's vote, saying opposition parties would get a chance to present formal non-confidence motions in the last week of May.

The House is likely to be given the chance to vote on the federal budget before then. If the Liberals lose, the country looks set for an election in late June or early July.