Mr. Speaker, it is rather odd that in debating a bill regarding the public service pension fund surplus we have to address the issue of same sex partners. Sometimes things are hard to explain, but this being said, we are going to have to address it.
I believe the government should have settled the issue in a different way. It should have introduced a separate piece of legislation to settle the issue once and for all; otherwise there will always be a risk. No matter what kind of bills will be introduced in the House of Commons, someone could always introduce an amendment to clarify the same sex couple issue.
In my mind it would have been a lot simpler for the government to settle this issue once and for all, and to proceed with the necessary changes following debate and discussions in the House. But instead it chose to take a piecemeal approach, which creates some distortions.
I am going to give you another example I am more familiar with as Indian affairs critic. It was found that in the area of matrimonial property division in case of divorce there is no protection whatsoever for women living on reserve. So we wondered what to do about it. What happened is that we started seeing bills regarding native people being introduced in the House of Commons; Bill C-49 is a case in point.
Native women lobbied hard and managed to convince us, in the Bloc Quebecois, as well as other members who supported us, to add to Bill C-49 a new chapter dealing with the division of matrimonial property. We told the government “You would be well advised to introduce a specific bill to settle this problem regarding native women once and for all”.
There is a risk for the House. No matter what kind of bill concerning native people will come before the House, native women will want to add a section dealing with the problem they want to solve.
The same applies to the bill before us today. It does not matter what bill is introduced in the House, there will always be someone who will want to debate indirectly the issue of same sex spouses and manage to introduce amendments to rectify the situation. So there is a problem.
I believe a great deal of debate would be saved if, once in a while, the government took the bull by the horns and resolved these problems once and for all.
We are beginning to hear legalistic talk about the supreme court having ruled this, that or the other way. This shows some lack of courage on the part of governments. Instead of settling important issues through legislation, and through elected representatives, they often dictate our conduct by giving us lessons in common law or referring to the superior court, the provincial appeal courts or the supreme court.
This shows a lack of courage on the part of the government, which avoids dealing openly with important issues, which drag on and will continue to drag on, despite all the debates we will have in this House. Yet, a specific bill would have allowed us to settle the issue once and for all.
Debate on a specific bill would probably have lasted quite a while, until the government decided to gag us. However, I believe that in the future it should be an option. If we want to bring a substantive solution to the issue of same sex spouses, the government should introduce a bill and amend the whole legislation in a way that would allow the House to apply a final solution instead of taking a piecemeal approach.
Now, what is the situation today? As I said earlier, there are distortions.
For instance, the member for Hochelaga—Maisonneuve, who openly admitted he is gay, will probably be forced to vote against the bill. I cannot speak in his place, but when he spoke earlier on the motions in Group No. 1, he said this legislation was unacceptable. He tried to find a word to describe it that could be used in the House. All day long, words were used in debate like “abduction”, “piracy”, “raiding”, “misappropriation”.
We have been trying to avoid unparliamentary language. Still, this bill is unacceptable to the Bloc Quebecois, and I think it is unacceptable to all opposition parties.
Even my colleague for Hochelaga—Maisonneuve intends to vote against this bill. The hon. member for Burnaby—Douglas said he would have voted against it too, if he had been here, but he is away on a mission.
We also have the opposite situation. There are government members who find this bill acceptable and will vote for it, but they do not necessarily like the new definition of spouse and their only way out is to move amendments.
I do not know what the outcome of our discussion on the second group of motions will be, and I do not know how the vote will turn out. However, after listening to the previous speaker, I get the impression that this issue will more or less be considered a moral issue, and that we will have free votes. In our party, we are thinking about having a free vote on Group No. 2, so that members can express their own views, because this is a moral issue.
Personally, I did not choose homosexuality, but heterosexuality. Yet I am open-minded enough to understand there are other things that are important besides my own feelings. It is part of politics that our ideals and ideas may not prevail. In the end, we must sometimes recognize that certain things that are different from our own lifestyle can be accepted.
I am one of the people who accept this. Some of my good friends are homosexuals. I have, in fact, made an effort to invite them over for a meal so that we could discuss these matters in depth. I am now perfectly capable of understanding that someone can have a life partner for 10, 15, 20, even 30 years. There have been recent court decisions on a couple who had been together 25 years, two people who loved each other deeply. I feel that the surviving partner of a person who has worked in the public service is entitled to survivor benefits, even if he or she is a same sex partner. That is, however, a completely personal opinion.
I would have liked to see—and I shall close on this point—the federal government follow Quebec's example. As recently as last week, Quebec announced that it would be introducing a bill to amend all of its legislation as far as this very issue of same sex partners is concerned. That would avoid a great deal of debate, as I said at the start of my speech. Then there would not have to be debate on each piece of legislation, as to whether to introduce a new definition of spouse or to stick to the traditional one.
I salute the Government of Quebec for having had the courage to do this. The courts are not going to be the ones to decide whether the definition, as it stands, is legal or not. The government will be undertaking a major change and a major cleanup of all its laws and regulations. It will be holding a debate on whether we, as a society, are in favour of recognizing same sex spouses. It will adjust the whole parliamentary mechanism, regulations and laws, after the debate.
Naturally, people will be able to have their say, and I hope that in Quebec City, as in Ottawa, if such a bill is ever introduced, the debate will go on as long as possible. I think this is the sort of discussion where people should speak up, and the definition may be decided once and for all.
If there is such a debate, I would be pleased to rise and say something of what I have said today and we would thus avoid having to rise with each bill and say “The definition in the bill is not traditional, I object and move an amendment”. That would save us a lot of discussion.
I would ask the federal government to follow the example of Quebec and to settle once and for all the question on the merits, not only for same sex couples but, as I mentioned earlier, for native women who are living on reserves, and for the division of property. We would do well to resolve this matter once and for all.