Mr. Speaker, the member for Dewdney—Alouette obviously wants to speak to the bill. I hope the Chair will recognize him in due course. Now he is going to check with his friends.
In any event, the bill purports to be more precise and use more modern language when dealing with the issue of benefits accorded under various pieces of federal legislation. It also deals with the concept of mutual obligation. In reorganizing, rewording and reconfiguring some of these definitions, as much as it deals with benefits the bill also deals with obligations whether they are mutual or whether they are from the citizen and taxpayer to the government. Therefore as long as couples, whether heterosexual or not, fall within the definition of what the statutes hold out as a common law couple, will come forward in dealings with the federal government as couples. That entails obligations as well as benefits.
Someone said that a computer calculated run through of the costs and benefits of the legislation indicated that there was a slight edge in favour of revenues to the government. It surprised me, but if a computer calculates there are slightly more revenues than costs involved, so be it. I am not sure that was the intention but I am sure the finance minister, by the same token, will not be too unhappy about it.
The amendments we are debating in the House are intended to address the last vestiges of the word illegitimate. As my colleagues know, that word has been around in common law for a century, two centuries or more. I have not read every statute referred to in the legislation, but I am advised that this amending bill will remove from federal legislation every reference to the word illegitimate as it pertains to the status of a child.
I am confident that all Canadians will accept that as an appropriate minor technical semantic but an amendment that looks at the status of children. No child ever had any control over where he or she came from. They simply end up in the world as one of us.
There are other elements in the bill which were not ever intended to be a substantial or radical reworking of our federal social safety net but rather an attempt to deal with charter issues that have been raised recently and going back a number of years. These charter issues have to do with how we describe ourselves, what a common law couple will be and what a common law union will be.
The number of relationships falling under that rubric has grown in modern society. It may well continue to grow. This is something over which we in the House do not have much control. People are going to get together as couples and in partnerships domestically and outside formal marriage. That is simply a reality that exists in Canadian society. We have to take account of it. At least it is to the benefit of children who find themselves happily with two good parents. We do not need to be specific about the gender. Two good parents are better than one. Then we will want to do that for children.
I will close by indicating my support for the bill. I have every intention of voting on the report stage amendments as they are put to the House.