Like my colleague from Swift Current.
It is about exclusion, not necessarily inclusion. Members opposite have to remember that. This is not about homosexuality. It is about an omnibus bill that excludes some people. These people, by virtue of exclusion, will be required at some point to go into the courtrooms once again and pay the enormous fees that lawyers charge to prove their case for equality. That is sad. This could all be headed off by the government saying today “Let's clarify this. Let's include people. Let's make this fair”. But it is not going to do that. In fact, it is leaving such a bill up to terminology like “conjugal relationship”.
I mentioned in the House several weeks ago that I had sat down with four young fellows in another riding. I happen to know them. We went through some of the issues involved in Bill C-23. I asked them if they would be involved in these benefits. They said, sure, they were all in conjugal relationships, and they were laughing and giggling and bumping each other. I asked what a conjugal relationship was to them, and they laughed and said “us guys” and that sort of thing.
I knew all four of them and I knew they were not homosexual. They said that I could call them anything I wanted, but if they could take advantage through this bill of the Income Tax Act, the Pension Act, the Insolvency Act and the Bank Act they would do it. Why? Because whatever a conjugal relationship is, it cannot be proven that one is in such a relationship.
I do not know how many times people on this side of the House have to say “Clean up your act”, but these are loose ends, and serious loose ends. It appears to me that the government is simply going down the road trying to collect votes from a certain group in our society such that it is willing to change all of these pieces of legislation.
That is power gone to its worst, in my opinion. This majority government is in its second successive term and the government seems to feel that it might get a third successive majority government. Whether that happens we will see. However, the government thinks it can bring in such omnibus bills which affect our whole society and get away with it.
When the Liberals leave office another government will be left trying to figure out the mess. It will acquiesce. It is such a mess and it will be left to the courts. As one who spends a great deal of time following court cases, I know that leaving these things to the courts is a sad mistake.
One only has to look at the child pornography issue which has been left to the courts. Can you believe it? Time and time again we look at the mess of drugs in our society. That issue has been left to the courts. People who have peddled hard core drugs are walking away from the courts just because it is money and not common sense to common people.
I do not know what motivates a government to do such a thing, but I do know that because it is a majority government it will get its way, unless somebody on the other side has the courage to take it away. We will see what happens a little later when the voting starts.
The other thing a majority government such as this has failed to do is to go out into the country and ask people what they think. A member just a few minutes ago said the “majority of Canadians”. That is very interesting because nobody from the government was in my riding and there are about 160,000 people who live in it. Are we excluded from this group called a “majority of Canadians”? Who did the government talk to? Lobby groups? Liberal associations? If I asked my colleagues, I do not think any of them would say that the Liberals were in their ridings asking questions about this bill.
When a member across the way says that the majority of Canadians believes in this, that is hogwash. It is not accurate. At least he cannot prove it is accurate. He certainly has not talked to the people in my riding nor in many other ridings in the country.
The bill is called the modernization of benefits and obligations act. I think, because we are trying to include one certain group within our society, to call it a modernization is a misnomer. I would tend to call it a specialization act because it is an act that is directed at special groups, subsets of our society. If this were truly a modernization act, it would include not exclude a lot of other people.
The more I come to the House of Commons, the more I see legislation like this, the more I watch a majority government stand up, one, two, three, as they will tonight, and the more this is thrust upon us, as it has certainly been thrust upon my riding, the more disappointed I am in the process of government itself.
This is a statement from the Liberal Government of Canada saying “You will take this modernization of benefits bill and you will like it because there is not a damn thing you can do about it. We have a majority”.
In the final analysis I guess the only thing we can do when such bad business takes place in the House of Commons is to remember it at the time of an election and get a government in that considers all people not just some, and one that modernizes and does not specialize.
I am against this bill for the reasons I have stated. I am extremely disappointed in a government that feels the majority of Canadians buy into it as well.