Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I appreciate the committee's being willing to hear me today.
I have some of the same concerns as those Mr. Rathgeber has mentioned today as we look at the bill, and I have heard from my constituents over the last few months that they are very concerned about what I would call a lack of proper definition of the two terms.
I understand that one of these is likely to be removed from the bill, but I don't think the proposal we see being made in amendment NDP-2 brings us much closer to understanding than does having both of them included.
When I read the lines talking about “deeply felt internal and individual experience of gender”, I wonder how far from “gender expression” that actually is. From my perspective I—and I think from the perspective of the folks I've talked to, they—would see those as being pretty much similar things.
I understand the concerns that Mr. Garrison has in trying to define this term. I think Mr. Rathgeber is being reasonable in his request that at some point there needs to be a little more structure put into the definition.
The criticisms of the bill right from the beginning have been pretty much around the definitions and around trying to find how we can come to a definition that addresses the concerns of persons who feel they need to be protected and the members of the public who feel that this bill doesn't need to be passed as it is.
I think, as Mr. Rathgeber indicates, there needs to be a more serious, if you want to call it that, or a longer look at what the definition of “gender identity” might be. Getting another opinion on that, as he has talked about, is a reasonable thing to ask for, because as we go through this issue we want to try to accommodate people. People who truly believe that they are of a gender other than that assigned at birth need to be protected; they need to make sure they have that kind of protection. At the same time, we need to make sure that others are not taking advantage of the code as it's written, so I am going to have to disagree with Mr. Garrison that this is an adequate definition.
As was pointed out as well, the other subjects that are chosen here are pretty much identifiable from the outside. In the case of such matters as race, national or ethnic origin, or colour, people can pretty clearly understand immediately that there is a characteristic they can identify in them. I think the lack here is that such a characteristic is not found in this case.
If I'm married, I'm married not because I have a deeply felt conviction that I'm married; I'm married because I actually went out and got married. If I have a family status, it's a place in a family such that I know what my status and my position is. If I have a disability, I'm well aware and others around me are likely aware of what it is. The same would apply to the other subjects there.
I think we're falling down here. I don't see it as possible to support this bill unless we do a better job of these definitions. Really, the whole legitimacy of this bill depends on our being able to come up with a definition that Canadians are not only going to be able to support but also understand when they support it. To this point, people have not been able to, and I don't think that Mr. Garrison's suggestion of “deeply felt internal and individual experience” is going to be adequate for Canadians to understand what we're talking about.
As well, I'm not sure that it actually deals with the issues the bill is trying to address.
I'm not sure what the solution is. It may be too late to make those amendments here, or perhaps you have some later that will deal with this issue, but I don't think this is a good definition. I'm going to have to vote against it, Mr. Chair.