Thank you, Chair.
I think everybody should have a copy of the motion in front of them. I'm going to read just the “therefore be it resolved”, the main one:
Therefore, be it resolved that the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration calls on the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration to immediately rescind the CIC Interim Policy and recognize legal marriages of gay and lesbian couples performed in jurisdictions outside Canada for purposes of immigration in exactly the same way as the legal marriages of heterosexual couples are recognized.
Mr. Chair, I find it passing strange that we would have a policy that doesn't recognize legally performed marriages in other jurisdictions in other countries, like the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, South Africa, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States, for purposes of immigration, when we in Canada have made that change to our own laws, made that change in terms of legal recognition of gay and lesbian marriages here in Canada, and when just last week we reaffirmed that policy in the House of Commons by the vote we had. So I think it's very important that we call on the government to immediately make this change and to be very clear about that.
I think the clerk distributed the information that appears on the CIC website, and I printed it just this morning. I called that up this morning and printed it off, so you can see exactly what it does say, up to date, hot off the press this morning. If you'll look under the section on the bottom of the first page, sponsoring your same-sex partner as a spouse under the family class, and then it says “CIC's interim policy”, you turn over the page to the second page, and just under the list of various provinces there, you will see this paragraph:
If you were married outside Canada, you cannot apply to sponsor your same-sex partner as a spouse. However, if you are a Canadian citizen or a permanent resident, you may qualify to sponsor your partner as a common-law or a conjugal partner.
Mr. Chair, I think that's clearly discriminatory. It sets up married gay and lesbian partners to go through a different process, to go through a process that's made for people who aren't legally married. It's made for people in common law relationships or conjugal relationships, and I think that's clearly inappropriate. We need to have exactly the same policy for legally married spouses, whether they're heterosexual or gay or lesbian, and we need to have that kind of policy as soon as possible.
And Chair, I have just one editorial change to the “whereas” clause, the second “whereas” clause. It probably should say “Commonwealth of Massachusetts”, not “State of Massachusetts”, to be absolutely correct. If we could make that as a friendly change, I'd appreciate it.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
