Madam Speaker, I find myself in somewhat of an unusual position, being opposed to this bill while being on the government side.
The bill is fairly simple. It really could be written in one line: common law heterosexual relationships are the legal equivalent to common law homosexual relationships. Therein lies the entire issue.
Regardless of what any of us think, the face of the Canadian family is changing. It is really quite revolutionary. In the course of my lifetime the divorce rate, for instance, has gone quite high. Something in the order 40% to 45% of marriages fail over the course of the lifetime of a marriage. I dare say that in the House the rate is even higher. The cost of marriage breakup is pretty difficult to quantify. My own view of it is that frankly the children pay the price for marriage breakup, which is a very regrettable fact in our lives.
The bill turns common law homosexual relationships into the legal equivalent of common law heterosexual relationships, which for many purposes is equivalent to marriage. However no one seems to get into the issue of equivalency and whether it should be treated as such. To say that marriages break up over the course of a lifetime at a rate of about 40% or 45% is and of itself a regrettable statistic, but common law relationships break up something in the order of 60% to 65% over the course of five years. From what I understand, gay and lesbian relationships break up at the rate of about 90% over the course of one year.
For public policy purposes one has to question whether they should be treated as equivalencies in law. Statistically the relationships are clearly not equivalent. My view for public policy purposes is that they should not be treated as the same before all purposes of public policy. However the bill does precisely that. I will not argue the point that common law relationships, be they homosexual or heterosexual, are not as committed, as loving or as whatever as any other relationship, but I do not think that frankly is the point.
We should not be basing public policies on some dubious notions, shall we say, of commitment and care for each other. Rather we should be basing public policy on the basis of the encouragement of what works and the treatment of other relationships as not offensive to equality.
I do not think there is anyone in this debate who argues with the basic point of equality and treating relationships in so far as possible on a basis of equality, but it seems that the government of the day, regardless of political stripe, needs to encourage the relationships that form the bedrock of our society.
The arguments that support the passage of the bill are as follows. The first argument is that the courts made us do it. That is what I call the bunker Mike Harris argument. Mike Harris thought that the best way to deal with a difficult political policy issue was to empty the legislature and have first, second and third readings all on the same day. Then he simply hoped that the fallout would be minimal.
This has been cited by some as a way to handle a difficult issue, and I quite agree that this is a difficult issue. It is not overly democratic, but what the heck. We get through it and get on with other things. It is called political expediency.
What disappoints me most is the unwillingness and the inability of our government to give serious consideration to the dependency model legislation. Not only does that dependency model legislation enjoy significant support in the caucus, but in my view it would enjoy significant support in the House. It was a great opportunity, to turn a phrase of Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, to get the nation out of the bedrooms of the nation and to remodel public policy based upon need or dependency rather than upon one's sex life.
By choosing this route the government has exacerbated the divisions both within caucus and within the House rather than leading members to points of reconciliation and harmonization of views. The government has bought into the bunker Mike Harris mentality without every having read the cases.
Any fair minded reading of the lead case in the area of M. v H. shows that the courts are more than willing to defer to parliament. In fact, they have given four and a half or almost five years for parliament to debate the issue and deal with it. Now we are told that we will have about two weeks in which to put the legislation through the House.
The management or control of this issue is well on its way to achieving that which it tried to studiously avoid. I believe the House could have come together on a dependency model and that parliamentarians could have articulated the views to and for Canadians, but instead in the haste to control government has made the issue divisive. I am perfectly prepared to concede that the issue is complex and fraught with difficulties, but the bill in my view is the refuge of the intellectually bankrupt and is the least that can be done under the circumstances.
This is not leadership in the field. It is frankly leadership by doing the minimum. Canadians have every right to wonder why together, whatever one's sexual persuasion, is the legal equivalent of marriage. For those of us who hold a high view of marriage, this is an amendment that is irksome and may well be damaging to the overall health of society. One year is frankly just like getting socks and underwear in the drawer. To make it the legal equivalent of marriage is something that needs to be thought about.
The government recognizes that having socks and underwear in a drawer is the legal equivalent of marriage and in fact prefers that relationship over the commitment by a son or a daughter to look after an infirm or disabled parent or child. When we put it in that phrasing we realize that we are going down a path of public policy which many Canadians may well not wish to go down.
There is something not quite right here. The bill will not enjoy my support. One of the sales points of the bill is that the government would leave the definition of marriage alone. Instead of articulating the definition of marriage in the bill the government has chosen to say nothing.
Of course one day after the passage of the bill there is nothing to stop a justice of any court saying that in his or her view the definition of marriage is old, antiquated, out of date and should be modernized. Then once again we will be going through this dance of the dialectic in the courts. We will be complaining about judicial activism and that parliamentarians will not have any say in the issue. Instead of dealing with the issue at this opportune moment, we are not dealing with the issue at this opportune moment.
Once again Canadians will not have their say in what they believe to be the essence of marriage and all the resolutions passed in the House will not matter at all, which is quite regrettable. A court will once again decide social policy, which is probably one of the last places one should deal with social policy. Then the justice minister of the day will introduce a bill amending the Marriage Act, arguing that he or she had really no choice but to follow the wishes of the court.
This is not a criticism of judicial activism. Rather it is a criticism of parliamentary inactivism. Canadians do not have a say through their elected representatives because the elected representatives do not insist on having their say.
There is a multitude of good reasons to oppose the bill, but the most significant one is that the government could have done so much more and has chosen to do so little. It did not define marriage and it could have. It could have got out of the bedrooms of the nation and it did not. It could have adopted a dependency model legislation and it did not. It could have reflected the changing face of Canadian families in our society.