Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for Quebec for her intervention and for her comments. In this particular case I really do not want to sound patronizing. Let me begin by making an obvious statement. I am not familiar with the specific laws within the province of Quebec to which she refers. I am however very familiar with the juxtaposition, if you will, of federal and provincial law in this area.
The fact is it relates to some degree to what I said in my closing remarks about jurisdiction and this may have been the translation because I was listening to the translation. The translator used the word allow. The hon. member, although not a lawyer, knows it is not a question of the federal government allowing the provincial government. These are clearly defined areas of jurisdiction, one within the provincial area and one within the federal area.
The Divorce Act is within the federal jurisdiction and is really the only area per se whereby the federal government gets involved in the legal ramifications of marriage breakdown. There are other areas in which marriages are terminated not by divorce which are provincial.
I can only again say to the hon. member it is not at all a question of decentralization. Indeed I remember some years ago at a constitutional conference with federal and provincial members, including at the time the late Premier Lévesque, who was willing to agree to throw all family law to the provinces. This engendered a huge and negative reaction from bar societies and lawyers right across the country, including lawyers from the province of Quebec, some of whom may even be members of the Bloc or the PQ.
To be quite serious, the guidelines, and as I said, I am not familiar with the Quebec guidelines per se but I imagine they cannot be all that different from what may not be solid guidelines in other provinces, but the traditions, those habits or areas that define mediation and pretrial settlements in divorce and marriage breakdown. Most judges in Quebec and in the other provinces of Canada attempt to get as best a handle on the matter and they also attempt-and this is the phrase I brought up before-to consider the best interests of the child.
I do not think there is anything in the federal guidelines that will unduly hamper anything in the provincial guidelines. The federal guidelines are good guidelines. They reflect, in my estimation and in my knowledge of what is happening in other provinces, much the same ideas, much the same theories, much the same goals and aims.
If there is something under the civil code in Quebec that is utterly at war with the guidelines at the federal level, I would personally be very surprised and I would imagine that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice would be interested in knowing what those were and perhaps looking at them. But it is most unlikely that these would in actuality conflict.