Mr. Speaker, I would like to bring forward some areas about which we have not yet talked. However, the debate has been ongoing for quite some time and everything is pretty well covered.
I would like to point out though that my own personal values and beliefs in regard to this issue are very strongly faith based. I have good reasons to say that. I think most people would understand why I say it.
I am very pleased to belong to a group of individuals who saw the importance of faith based decision making, especially our forefathers who had the foresight to inscribe on our buildings that “he will have dominion from sea to sea”. I have no apologies to make for that and I will not. Many decisions that I do make are based on that very thing.
I would like to indicate though that I have found and discovered through my experiences in life, and I have a few years in now, that I have learned the importance more and more on various occasions as to what is good about a family that is defined as a mother, a father and children and why it is so essential that this unit remain strong and have the strength to carry on with daily turmoils.
It is obvious to me from my studies in history that when the family begins to crumble, society begins to crumble. In many cases whole nations and empires have crumbled due to the destruction of the family. It is essential that we work hard to keep that strong and existing.
I was in the education field for about 30 years. For a number of years, I was principal of a school of grade one to twelve. There were nearly 900 students every year in that school. I served not only as principal. Prior to that I spend some years as a guidance counsellor.
Let me assure the House that there were many times during those years that I was able to experience why it was so important and essential for a child to have access to a mother and a father. It was illustrated time and time again.
I remember one experience where I needed to pay a little more attention to what was happening in the school and in the social affairs of all the people who were involved. A young boy who was about eight was brought to my office because he was misbehaving poorly. With that many students, I was not aware of the history or the stories behind most of the students. However, I found out that this boy's father had died in an industrial accident when he was about four years old. He had been without a father for quite some time. His mother was doing an excellent job of raising a family, of caring for them as a single parent. She was one of the best as is true in many cases in a single parent situation.
On a number of occasions that eight year old was brought to my office for misbehaviour or other problems. I never knew enough about the history of his family to know that this might have some bearing on the difficulties he was having.
One day when he was sitting in the chair in my office, after having been brought in several times, I said to him that we had to do something, that he was getting into trouble all the time. I asked him what was going on with him. He looked at me, with tears in his eyes, and said, “Why do I not have a daddy like the rest of the kids?”. That made me sit in silence for a moment.
Here was a young fellow who was without a father. It was no fault of his own. It was no fault of anybody except a tragic accident had taken him away. That day it dawned on me how important it was to that young fellow to have a mom and a dad, how he could miss them and how it could play on his life.
The boy was constantly being teased and ribbed by small children, as they will without knowing the harm they are causing. They teased him for not having a dad. A lot of times they do not understand why parenthood and bringing children up in the proper way is so important. I had more and more occasion to start thinking about the situation in regard to the family unit.
I learned after 30 years that a solid family unit, with the love of a mother and a father, created the best situation possible to establish a strong family unit for the benefit and future of their kids. That is not taking away anything from single parents, single for whatever reason, who we worked with during those years and who did an excellent job.
However, I believe it is all about that. It is the children. They are entitled to be brought up in a family that has the love and care of a mother and the firm hand and understanding of a father. I think there is enough evidence. Studies have shown that those kinds of situations are good for the family unit which in turn makes it good for the community as well as for the country. It makes it strong. It is the base.
I would ask that we think about all these things when we come to legislation like this. One of the speakers from the Liberal Party, I believe from Scarborough, mentioned several times that there ought to be more debate on what the future implications of Bill C-38 could have on our children. I agree with him. It is something that has not been debated to any length and it should be carefully considered.
One of the other speakers pointed out time and again, this was not about rights. In fact, I do not know any country that mentions marriage as a right. It is about public policy and values. It is about what we as a society believe our country should be. Yes, the voice of the people should be heard. Not only do we want to listen to the debates in here and try to learn from each other, but it is essential as elected members of Parliament that we hear the voice of the constituents and that we represent them.
I am really pleased to be a member of a party that has a complete free vote on this issue instead of other parties that do not. I do not know how anyone could talk about this being about rights and equality but stifle their own members from having a free vote. That makes no sense to me. What is really puzzling is in 1999 a decision was made in regard to a motion on the definition of marriage. When the vote was taken, it passed by something like 215 to 55. A lot of the Liberals who are here today were of that group of people at that time who supported it. The now Deputy Prime Minister stated firmly:
I fundamentally do not believe that it is necessary to change the definition of marriage in order to accommodate the equality issues around same sex partners which now face us as Canadians.
I support the motion for maintaining the clear legal definition of marriage in Canada as the union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others.
A huge majority of that party agreed with that and they supported it in 1999. Then suddenly it became an equality rights issue. When they all believed originally that it was not necessary to change the definition to accommodate equality, now it is a different story. What in the world happened to those people to come to that conclusion?
If they were genuinely interested in equality, they would take a look at some of the situations in our Indian reserves and the lack of equality for the spouses in terms of property rights. We have talked about that a number of times in the House. I am sure the Speaker will remember, it was not too many years back that I brought up the opportunity to adopt an ombudsman for people on an Indian reserve because they did not have an ombudsman. Every Canadian has an ombudsman, but the Indian reserves do not. That is a lack of equality. Why is that not being addressed? Yet the Liberal government, which is pushing this issue as equality, turned down that very possibility of making something equal on the reserves.
It is really a very sad day that the Liberals recognize equality in this area when the real equality is that every child should have a mother and a father. We should concentrate on strengthening that unit.