Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to participate in the debate on Bill C-23, same sex benefits, better known as the bedroom bill because if nothing is happening in the bedroom one does not qualify.
The Right Honourable Pierre Elliott Trudeau, the former Liberal Prime Minister of Canada, said in 1967 that “The state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation”. Unfortunately, the Minister of Justice and her government have decided that it was really necessary to introduce a bill whose purpose goes against that historic statement.
When the minister introduced the bill on Friday she kept repeating terms like tolerance, inclusion and acceptance. It is too bad the minister and the government do not practise what they preach. The bill is an inappropriate intrusion and in fact is discriminatory. It extends benefits based on sexual activity and excludes all other types of dependency relationships.
This is particularly disturbing at a time when more and more dependency relationships that do not include sexual activity are growing. Here we have the Minister of Justice, representing a party whose mantra was the government has no business in the bedrooms of the nation, introducing a bill that makes private sexual activity the sole criterion for eligibility and benefits.
How times change. We have the government that preaches democracy and inclusion excluding thousands of individuals who are in dependency relationships, thanks to the economic situation caused by this uncaring government.
The bill has one spin and it is based solely on conjugal relationships. It is unfair. Seventy-one per cent of Canadians feel that benefits and obligations should not depend on relationships like spouse but on any relationships of dependency where people are living together.
I will repeat that for my colleague over there from Vancouver city. Seventy-one per cent of Canadians feel that benefits and obligations should not depend on relationships like spouse but on any relationship of dependency where people are living together, such as elderly siblings living together or a parent and an adult child living together.
Clearly the government is out of step on this issue by basing benefits on private sexual intimacies rather than on cases of dependency. The Liberals will have to hire sex police to apply the legislation, and will that not be interesting? They may laugh at that right now but we will have sex police, mark my words, before this bill is finished.
I can see a lot of litigation surrounding the bill and, more important for all those Liberal friends over there, a lot of new legal practices in Canada. The government seems to do a lot of drafting of bills and setting things up so that lawyers have more work to do. That is wrong. The bill should not be about lawyers. It should be about people living together and depending on each other. Sex should not be involved in the bill.
On June 8, 1999, parliament passed a motion with 216 in favour and 55 against. The motion called on parliament to take all necessary steps to preserve the definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others. I was very proud like many of those other hundreds of people here to vote in favour of that bill. One would have thought this bill would have presented the government with an opportunity to enshrine this motion, but not a word.
It seems the Liberals have a problem with the institution of marriage. Simple recognition of this institution would have gone a long way in fostering support for Bill C-23. The bill gives out marriage-like benefits by failing to define marriage. What is the problem with the government? Is it afraid to define marriage?
Let us be honest. We all know why we have the bill before us today. I feel sorry for the legislative drafters at justice. They must have burned a lot of midnight oil over the last week or so in putting the bill together. Imagine the rush they were put to. All this was in an attempt to deflect attention away from the debacle at human resources.
How obvious can one get in one's attempt to salvage the squandering of one billion dollars? I would have thought the spin doctors in the PMO would have come up with something more novel and creative than this. It is an insult to think that one can detract attention away from an issue that has shaken the faith of Canadians in the system, but this government always tries that.
The finance department estimates that 1.6% of couples are gay which would indicate some 140,000 homosexual couples. In preparing this rush job to save its political skin, did the government consult, contact or discuss the situation for others who were in dependency relationships but who were not engaging in sexual activity? In a bill like this one would we not think that would be important? When we are taking a major step, how much time did we take to talk to people who were not engaged in sexual activity? It looks like very little if none.
Canadians have a right to ask why we are moving forward a step at a time. Why are we moving one step? Which couple will be the first to go to the supreme court and say “We do not have sex but we think we also have rights?” That couple will go to the supreme court and win, and we will be back here drafting more legislation. Why do we not get it right the first time? Let us get it right before we proceed.
Did the government for a moment give that element any thought? The Minister of Justice is a master at consulting for years and years on other issues. On the Young Offenders Act it was years and years. On drunk driving it was years and years. On consecutive sentencing it was years and years. I could go on and on. The minister is an expert at consulting and getting no bills through the House.
What makes this issue any different? The minister got orders from her political masters, the supreme court. If the Liberals had it their way, all legislation would be drafted by the court.
The government loves this judicial activism. If the court says so, we must comply. On the other hand the court has used and abused the charter for its own purposes and with the inertia of the government it is the court making the laws.
With the introduction of the charter to the Canadian constitution, a great departure began from the historic division of responsibilities between parliament and the courts. The consequences of this departure include the replacement of the supremacy of parliament with the supremacy of the constitution as interpreted by judges. Power has been transferred from parliament and legislatures to the courts.
Furthermore, this charter has thrust unelected judges with no direct accountability to the people into the realm of decision making and political activism. I do not think Canadians ever wanted their judges to be involved in political activism. That is what is happening in this country because of the Liberal government and the Tory government before it.
The consequences of this new but improper alignment of the roles of parliament, the administration and the courts have been far reaching and dangerous. Frankly it is time to re-establish several hundred years of constitutional convention whose premise is that parliament makes the laws, the administration administers the laws, and the courts are there to interpret the laws.
We have seen the Prime Minister get up in the House many times when we have talked about the Senate. He has said that we have done things traditionally for a long time and that it was good for this country. He has changed in these areas; he should also change on the Senate.
Any delegation of law making by the executive to the courts by default, which is what the government does, or any proactive assumption of law making by the courts is a violation of the basic constitutional principle. It needs to be corrected.
The government has given tacit approval to this misalignment of responsibilities by its vagueness in drafting laws and passing the buck to a supreme court only too eager to employ the charter in each and every instance. We have to get away from that.
This parliament has to draft laws that do not need big interpretations and then come back to parliament. We should be doing our job in the House and we should not have to blame any judges. But we are not doing the job in the House. The minister admitted that this morning by saying that this law is not perfect and that we have to look after all these other people. Where is it? It is not in this bill. What is the rush? Let us get it right before we proceed.
By its vagueness in drafting laws and passing the buck to the supreme court, which I mentioned is only too eager to apply the charter in each and every instance, the government provides every opportunity to the court to flex its charter muscle. The government plays cat and mouse with the court, particularly on sensitive national issues and thus encourages and nurtures the role of the court as a law maker rather than an interpreter of the laws. The Reform Party would put an end to this charter madness and judicial activism by way of a three part program.
First, an all party judicial parliamentary committee should be struck to review the fitness of all supreme court nominees. It is time the people had some say, not just the leader of the government. We have a three part plan which makes some sense.
Second, all legislation should be reviewed for its charter compatibility before it becomes law. My colleagues on the Liberal side seem not to understand this. They are not doing their jobs on that side. They are producing laws that are being shot back to us from the supreme court all of the time. They should be ashamed of themselves for making laws that keep on coming back here from the supreme court.