Thank you very much.
There is, as you point out, currently no national minimum age for marriage. This is an area that is very confusing to many people because they assume, as you point out, that there is one. The Province of Quebec is the only jurisdiction in Canada that has an actual minimum age for marriage in legislation. It's in federal legislation. The Federal Law—Civil Law Harmonization Act, No. 1 provides age 16 as the minimum age for marriage.
In other jurisdictions in Canada what happens is that there are many ages for marriage. The provinces will provide that the age of majority is the age for independent consent. Below the age of majority—for example, from 19 to 16 in some jurisdictions, or from 18 to 16—one can get married with parental consent. Where parental consent is not available, there are court orders that are available.
In many jurisdictions they then go further and provide that under 16 there are further requirements, for example a court order, or in some jurisdictions, proof of pregnancy of the female, as it says in legislation, or proof that a girl child is the mother of a live child before the marriage can take place.
What is a little bit worrisome is that if you look even further, in most of the provincial statutes there is another provision that says that even if the children marry under that age, the marriage cannot be invalidated if the marriage has been consummated, or if there was intercourse before the marriage, or if the pair have lived together as husband and wife after the marriage. Even if it's under those ages, it can't be invalidated. This is because it's within federal jurisdiction to provide the absolute minimum age or the floor age below which no marriage would be valid. That has not been provided in legislation federally and therefore the common law applies.
The common law is extremely old in this particular regard. That's why, as the minister mentioned, there's some confusion. Generally, it's interpreted as age 14 for boys and age 12 for girls. There is older case law that does go below that, but the general interpretation is age 14 for boys and age 12 for girls.