Madam Speaker, I appreciated the speech to some degree, although I have a number of questions for the hon. member for Mississauga West.
It is interesting that a third of the bill deals with redefining or changing the terms widow, wives, spouse, spouses. They are all taken out of the bill and he did not make any mention of that. They have been replaced with the following, and I read from the bill itself:
For the purposes of this part, when a person establishes that he or she is cohabiting in a relationship of a conjugal nature with a contributor for at least one year immediately before the death of the contributor, that person is considered to be a survivor.
The key is “cohabiting in a relationship of a conjugal nature”. Nowhere in the bill does it define what that is exactly.
Would the hon. member for Mississauga West be so good as to tell us how the government will determine who qualifies and who does not based on that definition?
For example, would two roommates who are close and share expenses but have no conjugal or intimate physical relationship be excluded based on physical intimacy? Is this the policy of the party whose leader once said that the government had no place in the bedrooms of the nation?
I would appreciate if he could clarify for the House how they intend to approach that issue with the bill.