Madam Speaker, thank you for allowing me to enter the debate on Bill C-23. It is a very significant bill, notwithstanding some of the comments that the parliamentary secretary made that somehow he felt this was not as important as certain other bills that the hon. member from the Conservative Party raised earlier.
I want to raise two essential issues this afternoon. First it is my intention to show that the bill is fundamentally and fatally flawed. It was put together in a trivial manner. It trivializes many of the very important things we believe in.
Second, I wish to show that the bill demonstrates that the Minister of Justice is actually acting contrary to the wishes of the House as expressed on June 8, 1999 when the House accepted in an overwhelming majority vote that the definition of marriage ought to be the union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others.
I wish to look at the fundamental flaw that underlies this bill. Not only has it been put together on very short notice and not only does it have tremendously far ranging implications, I am not sure the government has analysed what all those implications are. I suspect it has not. I suspect as well that all of the speeches we will make will probably not analyse all of them either because this cuts right into some of our deepest held beliefs.
Lest we think it is only the opinion of the opposition that this is the case, let me read into the record an editorial which appeared on February 15 on the editorial page of the National Post . It is very significant and I wish to read it in detail.
Proponents of gay rights often argue their cause by analogy with anti-racism. Discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, they say, makes as little sense as discrimination on the basis of skin colour. But this comparison does not hold water. While there is no justification for denying privileges to a citizen on the basis of race, the issue of sexual orientation is less clear-cut.
Society has a manifest interest in promoting heterosexual marriage, through which it perpetuates itself. Unlike heterosexuals, however, homosexual couples cannot conceive children through conjugal union. Nor can they provide children, however conceived, with adult role models of both sexes. Where all-male marriages are concerned, moreover, gay households would be far more likely than straight households to be destabilized by promiscuity.
Thus, the best way to recognize the intertwined economic interests of cohabitating homosexuals is not to expand the definition of marriage, but to treat gay unions the same way we treat common law partnerships. This is the idea behind the modernization of benefits and obligations act introduced by justice minister Anne McLellan on Friday. The legislation, if enacted, would ensure that same sex couples will have—where federal law is concerned—the same legal rights and obligations as opposite sex common law couples.
My hon. colleague opposite has created a beautiful mathematical, logistical formula.
But if gay couples are to enjoy the same benefits as common law heterosexual couples, what is the justification for denying these benefits to non-intimates, namely people in relationships who pool economic resources but do not involve sexual intercourse?—But this does not mean sexual intimacy should be taken, by itself, as a proxy for economic interdependence. Our society has a special interest in preserving heterosexual marriage as an institution. If we decide to confer economic and legal rights to couples whose relationships lie outside that special interest, then it makes just as much sense to accord rights to cohabitating family members and friends—spinster sisters or old army buddies, for instance—as to homosexual lovers.
In this respect the modernization of benefits and obligations act is poorly conceived. It expands the definition of common law couples only insofar as gay couples are concerned. Non-intimates are excluded. There are, of course, good policy reasons for not expanding the common law definition at all. But, once the justice department expands it to include gay couples, there is no reason why it should not include all cohabitating people.
And while the act does not go far enough in this area, it goes too far in another, elevating common law relationships to the same status as married couples with regard to all but a small handful of federal laws. In this respect, the government is actually going further than the Supreme Court of Canada has required. In the 1999 case of M. v H., the court struck down a provision in the Ontario Family Law Act defining “spouse” as (1) a married person; or (2) a partner in a heterosexual couple that has lived together for more than three years. The court ruled that it was unconstitutional to exclude same sex couples from the second category; but it left the issue of marriage untouched.
In the backgrounder that accompanies her new legislation, the hon. Minister of Justice is eager to reassure Canadians that “the definition of marriage has not changed”.
And on Friday she announced that “the definition of marriage relates to an institution that is of fundamental and longstanding religious and historical significance”.
But if this is true, then why has she introduced legislation that trivializes marriage by reducing it to a status more or less equal to that of cohabitation plus sex? Her new legislation, if passed in its present form, may soon become known as the End of Marriage Act.
Those are very serious statements made by one of the editorial writers of the National Post .
I do not think any of us in the House should ignore the gravity of the issue that is before us in this bill. Not only is it being foisted upon us quickly, without adequate study and debate, it is also ill-conceived in the sense that not nearly all of the implications that arise from this piece of legislation have been analyzed and the conclusions drawn.
What we have before us is an attempt by the government to foist a bill upon us under the auspices of what is deemed to have been a directive from the Supreme Court of Ontario, and it has gone beyond what that particular court decided. Why would this House go beyond what that court said it should do?
Why would the House even dare to suggest that the supreme court has a say in what should happen in this House? It could give all kinds of advice, it could give all kinds of indication as to what could happen here. It is perfectly legitimate for the court to do that. However, nothing could be further from the truth than for the House to take it as a directive. “We must act. This is the legislation we have to enact”. That is an insult, not only to this House, but to every Canadian.
All Canadians who are taxpayers and who elected people to this government should be saying that they are not representing them honestly and fairly and this is not what they want. This House is supreme, not the supreme court.
The hon. minister, with all due respect, has contravened the wishes of the House. She had a golden opportunity to introduce into this legislation a definition of marriage, to enshrine and affirm that we, this House, define marriage as one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others. Once again she missed a golden opportunity to lay the foundation upon which our society rests.
The family is the basic unit, the most efficient unit to transfer values and beliefs from one generation to another. She missed a golden opportunity, but she could still reconsider, and I hope she does. I hope that she will withdraw this legislation, or introduce an amendment which recognizes the family and the definition of marriage, to enshrine it so there will not be a contradiction and the denial of what has been clearly expressed by the House as being the desired definition of marriage.