Mr. Speaker, normally I am happy to enter a debate, but I think this is a difficult one.
One of the things with which I have had difficulty as a member of parliament is the issue of morality and the fact that from time to time we are called on as representatives to attempt to prejudge, understand and reconcile the different moralities that exist within the general polity.
I say this not only to those in my own riding, but also to some in other ridings which possibly have an even higher threshold of concern about this legislation.
The member who spoke previously talked about the hundreds of letters he is receiving. I too have received some and petitions as well.
Because of my own concern about this issue and having to in a sense prejudge morality, I can well remember the last parliament when we had a debate over the human rights amendments and it was a somewhat similar debate. I commissioned an official poll in my riding. Even though I received hundreds of letters opposed to the human rights amendments, I discovered that the vast majority of my riding was in favour of them. I fear we are doing the same thing here. As a matter of fact, I have had less response on this legislation than I did on the original human rights amendments.
I stand in my place today to support the legislation. Why do we support the legislation? Behind some of the arguments today is the issue between collective and individual rights. We have defined our country as a nation in the world which respects individual rights. One of the things we can be proud of as a nation as we go forth in the 21st century is that we support, respect and try to enrich individual rights.
This issue comes down to a question of discrimination. Do we in fact believe that certain groups in our society are being discriminated against simply because of some of the relationships they choose to enter into? My background is as an accountant so I focus on the Income Tax Act. It tells me that with these amendments a same sex couple in a dependency relationship will be able to claim the other one as a full dependant. I ask myself, if that was not the case, are they discriminated against? The answer is yes, they are discriminated against and are treated differently.
Some of those in the opposition and others who oppose the legislation would tell me they believe that is appropriate. In other words, there is some kind of appropriateness to some forms of discrimination. Once we start making exceptions to the rules of a body of rights in a country, we are going down a very slippery slope in which there are only rights for certain people and rights for others. That gets me back to my original discussion of collective and individual rights.
What is really bothering some people behind this legislation is the ability to impose their morality on society generally. In other words, things seem to be changing. This is the way things were. One of the members spoke about her family. I have been married well over 30 years and have a grown family myself similar to what she was saying. I discussed this matter with them and they thought this whole issue was a bit of nonsense and that we were a bunch of old fogeys in the way we visualize society because society has fundamentally changed in front of us. I know my mother would be giving me heck for my opinion on this legislation but I think people's attitudes and views change over time.
For those people in my riding who believe very strongly about this legislation and think it is bad legislation, I can only simply say that I have tried to reconcile their views with what I believe to be the majority of the people in my riding. I have come to the conclusion that we still believe in a fundamental principle and that is that the majority rules. In spite of what some of the members in the opposition would have us believe, I believe that the majority of Canadians in fact support this legislation.
Getting back to the definition of marriage, this legislation does not really deal with the institution of marriage. It is the provincial jurisdictions that deal with the institution of marriage.
Having said that, we have provided a definition within the preamble. I believe that many in the community who would oppose this legislation are happy that at least there has been some recognition of what we believe to be a marriage as being the union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others.
Getting back to the issue of discrimination, one of the things that bothered me about the legislation, because we are extending benefits and rights to a larger group of people than possibly now enjoy them, is that the question invariably comes up as to the form of discrimination. Are there other people in our society who are being discriminated against?
I talked about the dependency relationship under the Income Tax Act. Many people similarly brought up the issue of a daughter who is supporting her sick mother and should she also not have the right to claim her as a dependant. Fundamentally I think we all agree that is true. We agree that we should be extending this definition. It once again goes back to the theme of my speech. We must not provide for any discrimination in our system. In fact we must find ways to do away with as much discrimination as we can.
We can talk as much as we want about this utopian society, but the reality is we are curtailed somewhat by affordability. That does not mean the government is not concerned about that issue. I am very heartened to discover that the Minister of Justice and others have commissioned a study to look into the ability to expand this definition to include other people who may well be discriminated against. That is appropriate, but obviously to go down that road today to include a broader definition of discrimination would be very costly.
When I explain that to those in my constituency who are concerned about that, I explain to them that under our current laws a broader definition of discrimination would be prohibitively costly. The impact on private pension plans and others would be that some benefits now being received by some people in my constituency would actually go down to provide for this enhanced vision.
I suspect that in a future parliament, parliamentarians will be discussing expanding the definition to allow other forms of deductibility of obligations and rights. There is no question that as we go down the road our society is aging. I am very concerned about families who are trying to support themselves and possibly invalid members of the family and need some help from our taxation system.
I do not believe it is appropriate to continue to be silent on those issues. We will continue to debate them. As we prosper in the future, the definition of dependency relationships will increase to include those people but as of today we are going with this one measure.
It has taken us a long time to have a charter of rights and freedoms. As a government it has taken us a number of years to even invoke it, which is where we are being led to today. The courts are saying that we have not been living up to the terms of the charter and it is time that we did. That is fair and justified. To say otherwise means that what we really want to do is to amend the charter of rights and freedoms and take away individual rights and liberties, a famous hallmark of this country.
In conclusion, I am very supportive of this legislation. I certainly respect the views of others who are opposed to it.