Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the eloquent member for Mississauga West.
When I rose to make my maiden speech in the House in 1994, I pointed out that my riding contains the largest gay and lesbian population in Canada. They bring a sense of diversity to our city and enrich many areas of our community, including the artistic and cultural life of our city. These citizens, fellow citizens of ours, look to the government to fulfil long unkept promises of many previous governments to ensure that discrimination in their lives and in their employment will cease so that they may play their full role in society. It is their right to live in a world with a level playing field and we owe that to them. That is what I said in my maiden speech.
Later that year, on the occasion of World Human Rights Day, I said that, “As Canadians, we can be proud of our contribution to the international community on the issue of human rights and on the development of international standards to which we adhere”.
This said, we must also be ever vigilant that our human rights respect international standards and ensure the right of all Canadians to live free from discrimination in this country.
A recent decision of the United Nations human rights committee ruled that sexual orientation is protected by the equality guarantees of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a document which Canada helped prepare and which binds us.
Let us, in remembering World Human Rights Day, recognize that it is our duty to ensure that our laws in this country are amended to eliminate all forms of discrimination, including any based on sexual orientation.
Today the House has an opportunity to fulfil that duty and with it to achieve one of the most important tasks for which we are elected: the implementation of laws which guarantee that all our citizens may live in equality and dignity. In so doing we as Canadians know that all of society will benefit as we have so often found in this great country where our tradition of tolerance and acceptance of diversity has enabled us to create a nation which is the envy of the world.
I have news for the member from West Vancouver. This is not a diversionary tactic for my constituents. This is the process of fulfilling long overdue longstanding obligations of the most fundamental kind. This is a priority for real people who are living with real problems. They merit our attention and they do not deserve to be denigrated by the words such as were used by the member who last spoke in the House.
The path to this moment has not been easy. The need to take these steps was recognized by governments long before ours, but I am proud to say our government has had the political courage to deliver on something that many had recognized was the right thing to do.
I was proud to be part of the government elected in 1993 which recognized the need for these measures and implemented them. We started with Bill C-41, the sentencing act. We then passed Bill C-33 to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act. We then adopted Bill C-78 which extended pension benefits to same sex federal employees.
All of this legislation had the support of such associations as the National Association of Women and the Law, the Canadian Bar Association, the Canadian Jewish Congress, B'Nai Brith Canada, the Canadian Foundation of University Women, and the Canadian Association of Statutory Human Rights Agencies, for the very good reason that they represent basic Canadian values.
For a good number of these important institutions, these are important measures, contrary to what the Reform member who has just spoken said.
They also had the support and encouragement of our courts which in a series of charter cases such as Egan, M. and H. and Rosenberg recognized that our charter of rights and freedoms required total equal treatment for gay and lesbian couples. There is no justification in a free and democratic society, to employ the language of the charter, to discriminate against them in the manner in which our laws recognize the rights of those who live in a conjugal relationship and contribute to society together.
Today this measure completes and complements the reasoning of our courts. It enables us as legislators to voice our views on this issue and to complete the work we started when we adopted the landmark changes to our human rights act, changes which foresaw and necessitated the measures being considered by the House today.
I heard what was said by our colleagues opposite about this measure. They spoke about its irrelevancy, its lack of relevance and pertinence to the life that takes place in Canada today; but we already debated the appropriateness of the measures before the House when we debated the changes to the human rights act some years ago. We decided then by a free vote in the House, supported by 75% of the members voting, that the basic values of our Canadian society require that we eliminate all forms of discrimination based on sexual orientation.
At that time we knew our view was shared by the vast majority of the Canadian population, that some 70% of our fellow citizens across the country were in favour of that measure. That was then and the same 70% is in favour of these measures now for the same reasons.
What does the legislation do? Quite simply, where there is discrimination it eliminates it. It guarantees that throughout our laws there will be equal treatment for all common law relationships in relation to benefits and obligations. As pointed out by the member from Mississauga, this is not a matter that changes anything. This is extending to common law relationships the same rules and regulations. That is the essence of the discrimination that is being eliminated.
It does not go as far as some of my constituents would have liked. For example, there are those who might have wanted to see crafted some form of matrimonial relationship for couples of the same sex; but those who would have preferred that solution know the complexity of this issue as was referred to by my colleague, the minister from Vancouver. This issue requires political co-operation between the provinces as do all matters dealing with marriage.
I am sure they agree with me that what we needed to do today was to address the inequality of treatment in our statutes and to eliminate it wherever it is found. The bill accomplishes that. In so doing we have dealt with such issues as those addressed in Rosenberg. I am sorry my colleague who spoke about the courts and denigrated them earlier is not here to hear what the court in Rosenberg stated:
Differences in cohabitation and gender preferences are a reality to be equitably acknowledged, not an indulgence to be economically penalized. There is less to fear from acknowledging conjugal diversity than from tolerating exclusionary prejudice. As L'Heureux-Dubé J. said in Canada (Attorney General) v Mossop...“Given the range of human preferences and possibilities, it is not unreasonable to conclude that families may take many forms. It is important to recognize that there are differences which separate as well as commonalities which bind. The differences should not be ignored, but neither should they be used to delegitimize those families that are thought to be different”—
I agree with the formulation of the court and I respect the formulation of the court. I say to members of the House that when our courts speak this way they are speaking forcefully. They are speaking with the voice of the majority of the Canadian population which accepts that we live in a society of tolerance and respect for others, and not with the voice of those who say that we should sweep away the courts which speak for no one, sweep away the Constitution of Canada, get rid of the whole idea of the charter of rights and freedoms which is one of the fundamental notions of what this country is all about, sweep it all away and we will somehow live in a world where we can apply all our discriminatory views and all our worst views of one another and impose them on ourselves and on one another.
We chose to have a charter in this country. We chose to give our courts authority to interpret our laws. I respect the decisions of those courts because I think they have fundamentally followed their requirements under the constitution. I am pleased to say that I think my constituents support the decisions of the courts too. They support this statute because it is important to gay and lesbian communities that discrimination be eliminated so they can contribute fully to society. It is important to send a signal to everyone that discrimination is not a part of our social fabric. It is also important for society in general.
As I have pointed out on numerous occasions, many institutions in Canada like universities and important companies wish to hire the best people possible. They want the Income Tax Act changed so that they are not discriminated against when they enable their finest employees to work for them in a non-discriminatory manner. This is why these measures have been adopted by many other jurisdictions, provinces and countries.
I will complete my speech by saying I am proud to speak in favour of this measure. I am proud of my fellow members from all parties who support it. I am proud of our government and I am particularly proud of the many Canadians who have forced this on the House and whose indefatigable work in favour of justice and equity brought us to this historic moment in our life as a modern, diverse and equitable society.