Mr. Speaker, I did not really expect to say anything in the debate today. I thought I might at third reading. However, now I have the chance and I will add my comments.
I am a Reform member and I believe in equality for all citizens. That is why I ran for Reform. I have had experiences in another country where it said there was equality but I did not see it. I have said a number of times in my speeches that the visits I made to the Soviet Union it made me realize how important democracy is.
When I see the democracy in the House today it reminds me a lot of the manifesto of 1917 when there was freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to have property. It was freedom only for two or three people at the top. The rest were shut down or exterminated.
It sounded almost biased when I heard the government over the last couple of days making excuses that it could not fulfil its promises because of acts of God.
If we look back to the story of creation, God did create a husband and a wife. What do members think happened? The husband blamed God for his breaking the promise not to eat the fruit of life. He said it would not have happened if God had not given him that woman. That is where discrimination started.
I do not think that is the type of thing we want to reinforce, blaming God for our problems or making us do some things. We want to give him credit to show us and give us the wisdom to make the right kind of legislation.
When I look at this bill, it is a stepping stone to attacking the basic family unit. I cannot see it differently. If it is not, why would the government refuse to endorse the amendments made by my colleagues? They have been made to protect the basic institutions of marriage and family. If that is not acceptable, what is in the bill? Think about it.
The bill is a smoke screen. It is probably a way to get the door opened up a little wider to destroy the basic unit of the family. As we have heard in the House a number of times, when that happens, when the basic family unit becomes disintegrated, when it becomes non-functional, so does the country. That is something we have to look at very seriously in this legislation.
The communists in 1917 said they would be equal, that they would have freedom. They said families did not do a proper job of raising their children and they would take over. They said they do not really need marriage, the basic family unit. It was not many years later that Stalin took over the reigns and had a huge problem. He had so many orphans he did not know what to do with them.
If members want to read about history and some of the tragic stories before he got the system back on track, it is horrendous. In 1935 or 1936 Stalin passed legislation that gave the world the toughest divorce laws ever implemented. He could see the basic family unit was there for a reason. Even if he did not believe in God he could see it would not work otherwise.
I was amazed when yesterday or the day before I was watching "Newsworld". I saw the documentary on the Igor Gouzenko family. I remember when the Gouzenko family defected from the Russian spy system and asked for asylum in this country. Those people are still under protection today because the edict is out to kill them for what they did. They were warned when they discussed whether they would defect. Mr. Gouzenko said it means our family will die in Russia. What do we do? Can we afford to take that risk? They will be executed.
Their family told them if they ever got out of the country they had better not come back no matter what it meant to them. Today they are under strict security. They are hidden in this country. Nobody knows who they are. When they are on television they still must have their faces screened. What a life. What a penalty to pay. What a penalty the Soviet Union put on that family.
It took 50 million people, according to Mr. Gouzenko, to die because of what they believed before that system was overthrown. Solzhenitsyn wrote that 40 million people died. When I was in the Soviet Union in 1991 after the coups and the books were finally opened, the estimation was 60 million.
One old gentleman said "because of our mistakes, because our government tried to stamp out the religion that brought the earth into being, we will pay for it for centuries.
For five years of greatness in the second world war we propagated that and bragged about it for 70 years but never allowed the world to see what was happening our country".
According to that rate, he said it will take 970 years to write the horror stories that happened in that nation because it failed to look at the basic family unit, what it was set up for and what function it had.
Today we are debating this issue. Are we willing to bring that kind of a punishment on this nation? We have heard about the Roman Empire and other empires where the family unit became dysfunctional the nation finally did fall. If that is what we are trying to do we are on the right path.
I will not be part of that. I will vote against this legislation on third reading. I hope the Liberal government sees there can be no value in passing this legislation without ensuring those amendments are passed.
There is not one issue that has been debated in the House on which I have had so many phone calls, letters and petitions as those asking me not to support Bill C-41 and Bill C-33.
When we were voting on Bill C-68 we heard a comment from a senator that this was really not a bill to register guns or put guns under further restrictions. This was a social engineering project. This is exactly what happened in the Soviet Union. It outlawed capital punishment, then it implemented gun registration and implemented gun confiscation. Finally what did it have? It had a revolution. Only the people on the top had the guns. The poor people who did not have them died very violently by them.
If we do not want to believe what we read let us go back and look at history to see what has happened and what the examples are. If we want to look at what homosexuality and permissiveness have done to some countries let us look at Africa and the problems it has run into. There are guidelines laid down in this universe that we have to follow or we will pay the consequences.
What do we want? Do we want more freedom for a few years and then pay the consequences or do we want to follow what has been laid down for us in history, something that has worked for centuries? The family unit has built one country after the other. Once we have a country we have a government. Where are we going to go? Are we to destroy the family and destroy the government? Let us look at Liberia right now. Do we want that type of system? I do not.
It is a privilege and honour to say a few words on this subject. I hope we will take this seriously, look at the amendments and pass them with the bill because we all want equality.