Mr. Speaker, this is a very important issue to Canadians across the country, there is no question about that.
For the last couple of years ever since we have been elected to this place, I and certainly all members around the House have received all kinds of input from their constituents on this issue. People have strong feelings about it.
I echo the comments of the member for Huron-Bruce. He said people have not been stopping him on the street and asking when there will be gay rights legislation in the House. I have not had that. I have had lots of people come to me and say something quite the opposite: "When will we start supporting our families in this country?" I have had lots of people come to me and say: "When will we stop pandering to special interests?"
I have had that over and over again. This is an issue that deserves the close scrutiny of the House over an extended period of time for a couple of reasons. The public square, represented certainly by this place, is the appropriate way to deal with controversial pieces of legislation. This place of all places should be a spot where we can debate these issues so that at the end of the day we can make an informed decision about where we want to go. Canadians have that right as well.
We are speaking today to Canadians across the country. They deserve to have the benefit of the debate that should take place over an extended period of time from all kinds of members representing all kinds of points of view. That is very important, especially in the House of Commons.
I applaud members across the way who are standing up to their government and saying "maybe we do not agree with you, but we deserve the right to speak to this issue". That is very fundamental in Parliament, in the House of Commons. That makes eminent sense. I want to talk about that a little more later.
I want to respond to a couple of challenges the minister laid out this morning when he spoke with great conviction. The minister spoke with conviction because he truly believes this legislation will bring gays and lesbians into the fold, that this will make them equal in the country. In his heart that is exactly what he thinks.
The minister spoke about his upbringing and about the convictions he has tried to pass on to his children such as tolerance. That is admirable. He spoke about the Catholic church's catechism which teaches we must treat gays and lesbians with respect and compassion. Again, that is admirable.
I am willing to bet that when we stand in the House every morning before the House day begins and say our prayers, everyone says their prayers for all Canadians. They do not say "we discriminate against certain groups, we will not pray for them.
We can take the word of each person in the House. Knowing many of them, we can take it they believe in the equality of all Canadians. There is not a person in the House who does not believe in the equality of all Canadians.
The question I wish I could address to the minister is whether he really believes when he said those things that it is the government's role to be compassionate to other people. I do not believe it is.
The government can grant rights. It can grant privileges but it is up to people to be compassionate. The argument for equality is a good one. Equality can only ever come from people. Tolerance can only ever come from people. The only way to broaden the horizons of people is to sit down and have discussions.
One of the best arguments I have ever heard for not having laws against hate literature came from a gay activist from the United States, Jonathan Rauch. He is a gay conservative activist. He said he hates some of the language spewed toward him but he also knows that sometimes the measures taken to correct wrongs in society are actually more damaging than the wrongs themselves. I tend to agree. The way to fix these problems is to have a wide ranging, wide open debate across the country, not jammed into a few days so the government can push through something. That is the wrong way to proceed. People get resentful when they see that. It actually creates division. Let us have a wide ranging debate. Let us listen to the conservative gay activists Jonathan Rauch when he says let us have a wide open, wide ranging debate.
The minister was wrong to imply the government can somehow be compassionate. The real answer is for people to make the decision that they want to treat all people with respect. The only way that can happen is through debate.
The minister's comments remind me of what Jean Jacques Rousseau said in his famous tome "The Social Contract" in 1762 about people being forced to be free. His argument was that the enlightened few would make the decisions and these would be imposed on the French and they would be forced to be free. It is a great irony because one cannot be forced to be free.
These things have to be settled in the minds and the hearts of individual people. They cannot be forced on people. Equality has
to come willingly from people. Respect has to come willingly from people. It cannot be forced.
What should we do about the people who do not go along with this argument? What should we do about the people who are truly hateful people and they say they hate someone because of whatever immutable characteristic? There has to be a way to address that. Ninety per cent or ninety-five per cent of people are respectful. The question becomes what do we do about the other people. There have to be some measures in place so that we can deal with those things.
In the past we have had measures to deal with those things. I do not think it is a stretch at all to say some of the best government we had and probably the government which most reflected the wishes of Canadians were governments that used to use their legislatures as opposed to writing into a constitution the values of the people. I refer to the old bill of rights which was a statute law. It was part of the long tradition of parliaments that we have had in this country and also the mother Parliament in England where we have the right as a legislature to overturn previous decisions so that we can better reflect the wishes of the people we purport to represent.
Why not go back to that way of doing things? It worked well. It allowed us to have the power to reflect the views of Canadians from across the country.
In our haste to fix this problem people have taken what appears to be the easiest route. They say let us write it into law. One of the things that happens when we start writing it into the charter and ultimately into the Canadian Human Rights Act and so on, and we forget this, is that when we grant someone a particular right that means we are taking away a bit of a right from somebody else. Rights are nothing but power. Power is something that is a zero sum. There is only so much power out there. As one famous Supreme Court justice in the United States once said, my right to throw a punch is limited by the proximity of your chin. That is dead on.
One of the things we have to ask is who is the power coming from. When we grant someone a right under the charter and then it finds its way through the human rights act and so on, where is the parallel right coming from? Where is that power coming from?
Many members have mentioned they have a concern about the family. I believe some of the rights we are talking about are being taken from families. I will talk about that for a moment.
The minister challenged us to follow the logic through. That is a good challenge and I will try to meet it. He said we need not be afraid of the implications of this legislation. Follow the logic through. I want to do that right now.
The minister is saying this legislation will protect gays and lesbians from discrimination in the workplace. If that logic applies, what about the arguments that gays and lesbians make about the discrimination that is shown to them with respect to marriage and adoption? If these arguments to put protection for gays and lesbians in the Human Rights Act are valid, then they are also by extension valid with respect to benefits, adoption and marriage.
The same logic applies; this cold, hard logic that has no respect for custom, tradition, which is named rationalism. It is the type of logic that, although we do not necessarily see the outcome in this piece of legislation, at the end of the day Canadians will be very surprised to find that they do not like because it certainly could have implications well beyond what it does today.
I think the minister really challenged us to follow the logic through. If we follow the logic through it goes where most Canadians do not want it to go.
The head of EGALE, the organization for gays and lesbians, pointed out this is a first step. The hon. member for Burnaby-Kingsway, a gay activist and a member of this place, pointed out that this is a first step. In other words, it is one more brick in the edifice to building a new set of rights and privileges for gays and lesbians across the country. There have been many previous decisions which have moved them toward their ultimate goal.
The minister is naive to suggest his words will not carry some weight in other legislatures, in public debate and in the courts across the land with respect of future decisions. He is the justice minister of Canada. This will undoubtedly become a law of Parliament especially if the government forces through a party vote and brings down the hard whips of discipline.
If the justice minister's words carry some weight, and I suspect they do, undoubtedly they will influence other legislatures around the country and certainly the courts. They will add weight and give confidence and support to those people who want to pursue a more radical agenda. It is important to point that out.
I want talk for a moment now about families overall, how they came to be so important in society. Over several millennia, across many cultures and many nations we have had different cultures, people who decided in many ways through trial and error that the traditional family as we have come to know it in this country is the best possible family for the rearing of children. The family is so important that it has been afforded many prescriptive rights over thousands of years. By prescriptive rights I mean by custom it has been granted special status in law, in custom, across many lands over these many years.
It is important to recognize this because the argument the minister and some hon. members are making are outside the context of custom and tradition. They are assuming the cold, hard logic of the minister is the only thing that is important. They say that reason is all powerful and they have deified reason.
I think reason is important, but we have to make our reasoned discussions within the context of custom and tradition and values and religion, et cetera. I know those things are very important to people across the country. I have talked to hundreds of people in my riding and I know how important they are.
I would go further and say that reason alone can never establish values. We have to refer to custom, religion and tradition in order to establish values. The arguments being made today are outside the context of that long tradition in western civilization. That is extremely dangerous because there is not a single act of any kind that cannot be justified through pure cold hard logic and reason. If my self-gratification is all that is important and the common good does not matter a whit, then I can use reason to justify just about any act.
I say to members across the way, let us have this debate about reason but let us put it in the context of the long tradition of western civilization where certain prescriptive rights have been granted to the family and have put it above everything else because it does so much good in society as a whole. We must recognize that over thousands of years these cultures have granted us all kinds of things that we treasure and hold dear, including culture and art. These are things we would not necessarily get from this rationalistic society that is being built through the use of pure cold hard logic alone.
I point again to the great debate in Europe over 220 years ago during the French revolution. Rousseau asserted prior to the revolution: "You will be forced to be free". That is the direction members across the way, perhaps unwittingly, are going. Many of these things cannot be justified when they are put in the context and long tradition of history and culture in western civilization.
Finally I want to say a few words about the need to have a public debate on this, a real debate, where members are allowed to vote freely and represent their constituents. I know what constituents in my riding think. I have asked them time and time again. People have said that they believe legislation like this will begin to erode the ability to stand up for the family.
People ask: If the government is pursuing measures to strengthen the family, then why is it not changing the tax laws which penalize families? Why is the government not doing things for families such as taking the money it would send to day cares and giving it to people so they can remain at home to raise their children? Those are the kinds of questions I get back home.
We certainly do not get questions as to why we are not writing new legislation to protect gays and lesbians. People are not asking for that. Some groups are asking for it, but people in general are not asking for it. Not at all. We need to hear from all those people who are hearing the same message back home.
The chief government whip is here and the government is going to bring down the whip pretty soon and say that we are not allowed to speak. We know the member from Ontario would love to speak to this motion but he will not be allowed to speak, which is a crime. The hon. member for York South-Weston was thrown out of the party. He was muted because he wanted to speak for his constituents. For crying out loud, if we cannot speak in this place where in this country are we free to have the debate?
I challenge the chief government whip, I challenge members across the way to say it is time to let Canadians have their voices heard on this issue through their members of Parliament. I urge the chief government whip and members across the way to push their Prime Minister to allow a free vote on the issue of the inclusion of sexual orientation in the human rights act.