Mr. Speaker, there are good sound legal reasons why each of the amendments was not accepted. The reasons differ with each amendment.
The problem with the member's question and the line of inquiry he is opening up and the attack which has been made on this legislation is that the member is not dealing with the legislation. The member is dealing with hypotheses, projections of what might occur in other legislation if this legislation is passed. He says, quite emphatically, that if the Canadian human rights law is changed by prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, he is not opposed to that. That is what the Canadian human rights law that we are amending deals with in this instance.
The Criminal Code, the charter of rights and freedoms, all of the other laws that are hypothetically raised as spectres that will happen if this change is made are totally irrelevant to the legislation that we are debating today.
If there has to be a change made in the future to some other law to deal with concerns such as the one the member has raised, those laws will have to be debated in Parliament. If they are debated in Parliament then the views of all sides of the House will be raised in connection with those laws.
However, to raise all these hypothetical scenarios which have nothing to do with this law, as the member admits, is again the fear-mongering which has been taking place in order to confuse Canadians who are seriously considering the ethical and human rights questions which are directly related to this legislation. That
is a dangerous line of inquiry. The issue is too important to be dealt with in this very fuzzy fashion, if I might use that term.