Mr. Speaker, I will try to keep my remarks cogent.
As has been variously raised, mainly by the Reform Party, the issue of the word conjugal has turned up in the act. There have been a number of questions through our side and the suggestion that we do not want to deal with the issue raised in the bill, that is same sex survivor benefits.
I have speaking notes provided by the government. As a matter of fact I think by the department, and I presume they are available to every member of parliament. These notes make it very clear that this legislation is about giving survivor benefits to same sex couples. It notes in the notes that I have that this is merely following in concert with various court decisions that have come down recently.
I see the member for Calgary Centre in the House. In his remarks he focused on the issue of giving survivor benefits to people in conjugal relationships. He has a very important point, because rather than the bill specifying very clearly that the intention is to provide survivor benefits to same sex couples, the bill seems to have, shall we say, gone around the corner the long way.
I have the bill here. What it has done is taken the section in the original bill that deals with survivor benefits, and that section in defining who is eligible for survivor benefits uses words like person of the opposite sex to whom the contributor was not married, the surviving spouse, the spouse of the contributor, become married to the contributor on a certain day and so forth.
In other words, the existing section of the act talks very specifically about spousal relationships and marriage relationships as defining the people who are to be eligible for the survivor benefits. Because they are talking about spouses and marriages it is assumed that it is a heterosexual relationship.
For the purpose of the act this area was changed in various places, but to avoid use of the word spouse, married or anything like that, the act defines the relationship. It says for the purposes of this part when a person establishes that he or she was cohabiting in the relationship of a conjugal nature with the contributor and so on and so forth. The key word, as pointed out by the member for Calgary Centre, is the word conjugal.
Here is the problem. I for one believe it is high time for this government to recognize that there are special relationships, that there are same sex relationships that are dependent relationships and are very emotionally tied together in almost every way we can imagine. Whether there is sex involved or not there can be relationships between two individuals that have the force of a marriage, even though they are not a marriage, but are not necessarily conjugal.
The problem is that when we use the word conjugal we not only imply but we actually say that the relationship we are talking about is the married relationship. More than that, when we use the word conjugal, depending on the dictionary we use, we are even implying a heterosexual family relationship involving parents and offspring.
What I see as a result of this problem is that the government may be missing on the very thing that it wants to achieve. In other words, by saying conjugal in this bill the government may be leading the courts to strike down any attempt to apply these survivor benefits to same sex couples.
The member for Calgary Centre had a point but he did not pursue it in sufficient depth. What is really wrong here is not that the government is trying to pull the wool over our eyes or go around some corner to do something the public does not want it to do. The government has been very open with respect to its intention to try to honour what the courts have said and to honour what most Canadians are saying, that there are certain special relationships that do justify people receiving survivor benefits.
However, I think the government has erred dreadfully in using the word conjugal rather than actually coming out and saying it for what it is. If we do not want to use the term same sex relationship then dependent relationship could be defined elsewhere in the legislation, the word dependency. The use of conjugal in this context may lead to problems with this legislation. I hope the government will re-examine the way it has written these particular clauses.