Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise on this debate today. There are a couple of points I want to focus on. The government has made an attempt to define marriage by bringing forward an amendment. The jury is still out. Obviously there is some question as to whether in fact it will do the job. I do not want to focus on that. A number of my colleagues have already talked about that part of the discussion.
However another whole area has been left out of the debate which I find quite frustrating. I spoke to it originally, the last time we debated Bill C-23. I believe the bill has been put together quite hastily. Other very good options have been brought forward that could have dealt with this point. One of my colleagues brought forward another solution which he calls the registered domestic partnership. I think that is something on which we should be focusing. It is a lost opportunity.
I am frustrated the government has refused to deal with that. When Bill C-23 was first debated there was no doubt in my mind that the government brought it together very quickly. It was very frustrated with what was going on with the billion dollar boondoggle. It wanted a diversion in the House. It has not worked. The public still is very frustrated with the accountability and the way the government spends money. The end result is that we now have a very poorly drafted bill which is not well thought out. It did not look at all the options presented by my colleague and others.
Because it was done so hastily and so quickly it will be left to interpretation. All kinds of court cases will result. It has to go through that process and at the end of the day it will cost taxpayers a lot of money that is not necessary. That is my frustration with the bill.
Why should dependency be based on a conjugal relationship? What exactly is a conjugal relationship? If we look at the true definition of the word, which has been pointed out by my colleagues, it is based on a sexual relationship. Is that how we should be putting legislation through in the House? Should it be based on a sexual relationship before one can receive benefits?
What I find frustrating is how the House operates. A member from an opposition party, the member for Edmonton Southwest, put forward some very good solutions. He even offered them to the government to use as its own solutions but they were ignored. That is one of the frustrating aspects for me.
He basically wanted to remove the sexuality from it. Benefits should not be based on sexuality. In any type of a relationship there are other solutions available but the government has specifically chosen to ignore that. I think that was the way to go. If there are two people in a caring relationship, why should they be excluded because they are not in a sexual or conjugal relationship?
The government has missed an opportunity. It has come back with an amendment I think because of public pressure. We in this party led the charge on this by forcing the debate on the definition of marriage in a supply day motion in June of last year. To their credit, many government members voted in favour of that, which I believe was the right thing to do. However, when the government first brought Bill C-23 down it did not include that in the bill.
Now there is some discussion again as a result of pure public pressure. My office has received all kinds of correspondence and calls on this. The government hastily made an amendment to the bill. I applaud the government for at least acknowledging the public pressure on this and including the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others. However, it was done so hastily that one wonders whether the government has changed anything and whether it will actually have an impact on all the legislation that it needs to. I do not think that question has been decisively answered. I think that still needs to be done.
The government put this together at the last minute. It even put together a last minute amendment which we are not sure will do the job that is necessary. I personally was pleased to see the amendment come forward but I do not know if it will do the job.
The most frustrating part is that the government refused to look at a perfectly good solution by the member for Edmonton Southwest. He has been trying to put his registered domestic partnership theory forward for two years now, which I think would have been the best solution for everyone and something that all members of the House could have supported. It would have addressed the decisions by our higher courts that some of our laws had to be dealt with.
It was frustrating to see the government hastily throw together a bill for what I saw as political reasons. It wanted to get something on the order paper. It needed to introduce this bill because it was getting hammered on the billion dollar boondoggle.
We are left with a bill which, as some of my colleagues have pointed out, will probably end up in numerous court cases and go through the whole legal process all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. Of course that takes years and years to happen and will cost millions and millions of taxpayer dollars. That should not have to be done just because we have refused to take the time to do it properly in the House and have refused to accept suggestions from members of all parties in this debate.
Should the government be able to decide in five minutes that it has a solution and then bring in a bill and that it is? We can debate for eons in here, we can go on for months and months but it falls upon deaf ears. The government does not accept changes.
Yes, the government did bring in an amendment on the definition of marriage but it was purely due to public pressure. I know pressure was out there because the phones in my office have been and still are ringing off the hook.
I am not convinced that Bill C-23 is what we want. I wish the the government would have followed the advice of the member for Edmonton Southwest, who I think has put forward a very sensible alternative to this bill.
A motion to adjourn the House under Standing Order 38 deemed to have been moved.