Oh no, that's all right. I'll do it in one or one and a half.
I just want to make one brief point. I really wonder if the drafters have considered—which I don't have in an amendment at this point—what “free and enlightened consent” will mean for two people. I note parenthetically that this could save Britney Spears all kinds of trouble if she tried to get married in Canada. In any case, I find that this is a new definition for contracting marriage, and I wonder if it will cause us trouble down the road.
With these amendments, PV-2, PV-3 and PV-4, I am trying to get to the same issue that Mr. McCallum just put forward, which is that there were a lot of witnesses before the committee, including UNICEF and the Canadian Bar Association, who said that we really don't know what the proper age might be in order to provide clarity and protection for young people and to ensure that they are not forced into marriages.
The reason I'd like to present all three at once is that they work together. The idea is to create some time, as this bill is coming into force, within which the government can do further consultations and study to figure out the best federally mandated minimum age of marriage in order to pursue further “evidence-informed analysis, and consultative processes with children and youth and other relevant stakeholders...to determine what course of action will best serve the best interests of Canada's children and youth”. That was a citation from the UNICEF brief.
The way the three amendments work together is essentially to put the same provision that you find in the bill now at a different point in the act so the entry into force can be postponed to allow this section to be clarified.
With that, Mr. Chair, I conclude presentations on three of my amendments at once.