Mr. Speaker, I answered that question when I first started. Parliament has supremacy in the legislative functions we exercise subject to the constraints we chose freely to impose upon ourselves through the charter, the supreme law of the land. The same is true of all provincial legislatures. The same is true of ours. Unless we choose to adopt the notwithstanding clause we have accepted to fetter our jurisdiction in that way, and I have no trouble with that.
I think the hon. member is operating from a false premise. He says we have spoken on the issue and the courts have gone against how we spoke. We have not spoken on the issue since parliament adopted the Human Rights Act amendments in a free vote, not imposed by the front bench.
The House will remember very well that it was a free vote. There was a lot of controversy here as to whether or not it should be a free vote. Many people felt it should not have been. The fact that it was a free vote, and that 75% of members of the House at that time said they were not in favour of discriminatory measures of the type we are hearing about today, sent a clear message to us as legislators and to the courts that the Rosenberg decision as it stands is consistent with the mood of the House. It is consistent with the mood of the country and it is consistent with the basic principles which govern us as a democratic society.