Madam Speaker, I point out to the member who just spoke how it does make a difference. That will be the whole point of my speech. I ask him too to look at reality.
Last summer I spent a lot of time working on a family farming project. It was very labour intensive and provided jobs for a lot of young people in our area. I worked side by side with many young people between the ages of 16 and 20. Many of them were from a youth rehabilitation centre that worked with young people who had run afoul of the law.
After working side by side with me and doing some very difficult work, they began to talk with me one on one. They of course did not know that I am a member of parliament, nor did they care and it would not have made any difference to them. As they began telling me about themselves, their backgrounds and especially their home environments, I was struck by the fact that they all had one thing in common: every single one of them did not have a father in the home.
My experience provides the passion for what I have to say today in my whole argument. We have given certain groups within our society special privileges without balancing them with responsibilities. Who suffers? It is the children. That is my theme today. If we go ahead with Bill C-23 as it stands today without amendments, it is the children who will be hurt and it is the children who are not even born yet who will be hurt.
Let me explain. Hopefully Liberal members are listening and not just giving catcalls as they are doing now. This is not just an issue of personal conscience. Every law has consequences otherwise we would not even be talking about it or dealing with it in parliament. What are the consequences of Bill C-23 going to be?
By going back to the example I began my speech with, let me underscore the fact that if we do not have healthy, strong homes and close families where both parents play a strong role, we will end up with children who begin life with two strikes against them. It is the children who are hurt. Those are the consequences.
Solid homes and families build a strong nation. A solid home and family is built on a firm foundation. That firm foundation is a lifelong marriage commitment. It is not a sexual relationship. That is the big flaw with Bill C-23.
It is a huge mistake for the government to base benefits on a conjugal relationship. That is not the same as a marriage relationship. The state needs to encourage lifelong commitments to form the basis of a strong, stable family where children can grow, develop and learn the values from their parents that will give our society its palatability.
We have done some in-depth research on this. Legal research in the last week has indicated that putting a definition of marriage in the preamble of Bill C-23 is not good enough. The research shows clearly that the amendment is very weak and will do nothing to the 68 pieces of legislation that are being amended.
I want to emphasize that because that is a key argument in everything we are saying today. Why? Because Bill C-23 is an omnibus bill. It amends 68 other pieces of legislation. At the very least every other one of those pieces of legislation must have the preamble of Bill C-23 included in it and that is not going to happen as it is presently structured. Lawyers tell us that this bill is set up in a way that it will not happen. That is the great flaw with this legislation.
We must preserve the marriage commitment for the sake of our children. Is it any wonder that the world's greatest teacher said that it would be better for a millstone to be put around a person who hurt one of these little ones and then for that person to be dropped into the sea. Let us never forget that.
Benefits should never be based on a sexual relationship either. Benefits, if the government so chooses, could be based on a relationship of dependency. If I have time I am going to propose that positive alternative to what the Liberals have done.
This bill should not undermine the strength of the family home. If the state is to provide any incentives, it must consider the most vulnerable in our society, our children. Those incentives should promote stable family relationships where children are nurtured and developed. The state needs to promote the commitment, not the sexual act.
Let me point out that since I spoke up a week or two ago on this issue, I have received a lot of mail, both pro and con. The government's handling of this issue has created deep divisions. These divisions would have been unnecessary. Without exception the criticism I received did not counter my arguments. It only called me names. Pinning labels on those who disagree is hardly legitimate debate.
I pointed out that buggery was against the law back in the 1950s and is still in the criminal code today with two exceptions. Today one can receive benefits from the federal government if one practises it. As a noted person once said, if we want to get a jackass to listen, first we have to get his attention. By pointing out that we as a society have changed since the 1950s, people did pay attention. Many were shocked.
Here is another aside. Those who are preaching tolerance and respect, those who are criticizing me now quite verbally, do not respect the alternate point of view or even listen to the arguments.
The experience I have had in dealing with children is underscored by Statistics Canada data. I would now like to go through that. Two years ago Edmonton journalist Lorne Gunter analyzed how costly common law relationships are for taxpayers. Here are some of the startling facts he found published in Statistics Canada data.
Sixty per cent of domestic violence occurs in common law marriages. The chance that a woman or a man in a common law arrangement will be the victim of abuse is more than nine times that of a married person.
Sixty-three percent of children born in common law relationships will witness their parents separate before they reach 11 years of age. This compares to just 14% for those children whose parents never lived together before marrying and 26% of those children whose parents shacked up together before getting married.
Forty percent of common law relationships end before marriage. Couples who live together before exchanging marriage vows are more than 50% more likely to divorce than couples who did not shack up.
How do these family breakups affect children? Children whose parents' relationship breaks down are much more likely to underachieve in school and in life. They are twice as likely to drop out of school. Girls are nearly three times as likely to get pregnant before leaving their teens and far more likely to have abortions. Suicides are higher. Illegal drug use is greater. They are nearly six times more likely to get in trouble with the law. Four out of every five convicts come from broken homes.
Mr. Gunter's conclusion is that marital breakdown is a leading cause of social problems, perhaps the leading cause. Because common law relationships are so prone to breakdown, they contribute disproportionately to social ills and everyone must live with them and subsidize them.
I gather from the comments from across the way, the members are not even listening to the relevance of this argument.