Mr. Speaker, the hon. member made reference to the dictionary and I thought I would share with him a reference from the dictionary which I looked at this morning. It has to do with the word discrimination.
The hon. member will know that for some members who argue this case the issue here is equality and to not extend equality is to discriminate against a particular group of people. We certainly have seen that in court decisions.
In the dictionary the definition of discrimination includes a mixture. It includes prejudice, bias and victimization, but it also includes distinguishing between favouring or giving notice to. It dawns on me that within the dictionary and within the context of discrimination there is negative discrimination and there is affirmative discrimination.
Would the hon. member like to comment on whether or not he believes that denying same sex marriages is in fact a question of negative discrimination or affirmative discrimination?