Mr. Speaker, I last had an opportunity to speak to the bill on February 21. In the period of time since then and considering the momentous number of things the bill would change, the lack of interest by the national news media in this debate, particularly in getting the information out to the Canadian public so that it might be made aware of the implications, has been interesting.
I believe that any society in the world is no stronger than its smallest unit. Unfortunately legislation that we pass in the House frequently chips away at the ability of Canadians to organize themselves in any way to enhance their family unit, which is the smallest unit in society.
The Liberal government introduced legislation called the same sex omnibus bill. It will grant a same sex couple virtually all the benefits and responsibilities of common law couples.
Bill C-23, an act to modernize the Statutes of Canada in relation to benefits and obligations, would amend 68 federal laws affecting key departments and agencies. The bill creates a new term called common law partner, defined as a person cohabiting with another person of either sex in a relationship for a year. Probably the most serious single oversight of the Liberals is that they chose not to define the word conjugal. The common definition of a word may or may not become the legal definition. Lack of definition in this legislation requires the judges to make law. Conjugal will likely mean intimate sexual activity.
The government wants us to believe that the bill merely gives same sex couples the same federal benefits as heterosexual couples. As I mentioned at the outset, unfortunately the mainstream news media are basically ignoring the entire issue being debated not only today but for the time it has been before the House of Commons.
I think the word news is made up of the word new in that they want to have something new. I would therefore draw to their attention what my colleagues in the Canadian Alliance have been reading and reading and reading all day long.
It is the opinion of Mr. David M. Brown, a partner in Stikeman Elliott's civil litigation department in Toronto. He practises commercial and corporate litigation and administrative law. Mr. Brown is a sessional lecturer at the Faculty of Law at Queen's University where he has taught trial advocacy since 1989. He was a seminar leader for the civil procedure section of the Ontario bar admissions course.
Mr. Brown has appeared at all levels of court in Ontario and Manitoba, as well as frequently before the Supreme Court of Canada. Major constitutional briefs have included being counsel for interveners before the Ontario Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada in Rosenberg in 1998 and M v H in 1999.
This person's opinion has some very distinct weight in the context of the minister coming to the justice committee and saying “We are going to define marriage and this is how we are going to do it”.
The Minister of Justice is also a distinguished lawyer. I believe she has taught law at least at one university in Canada. Therefore it is hard for me to understand how she could have missed the obvious item that Mr. Brown has pointed out:
If Parliament intends to state that, as a matter of federal law, “marriage” is the “lawful union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others,” then in my opinion the Minister's amendment does not achieve that objective. As previously stated, the Minister's amendment is not an enacting section—it will not bring into force any legally binding definition of “marriage”. By contrast, if the Bill was amended to enact a definition of marriage for each of the particular acts referred to in the Bill, then Parliament would be giving a clear indication of its intention to the courts and to the public at large.
I mention again that it is a responsibility in a democracy for us to have freedom of the press, but it too has a responsibility to bring to the people of Canada these facts and these words. It is the opinion of this respected scholar that the justice minister, either in haste or perhaps in ignorance, clearly missed the boat by not putting this definition into the enacting part of the legislation. I would not dare suggest any other motivation on the part of the minister.
We have spoken all day long about the fact that this is an attack on marriage. Although it was unlikely intended that is exactly what the bill is. Its consequences will abolish marriage as a specific relationship under federal law.
The purpose of the bill is to open up the unique rights and privileges of heterosexual married couples to those cohabiting in a conjugal relationship. This is very troublesome. To acquire proof of conjugal or sexual relationships between individuals would necessitate a gross intrusion into the bedrooms of Canada. When Pierre Trudeau was prime minister he said the nation had no place in the bedrooms of Canada. Yet the same Liberal Party is now stating that benefits will be available on the basis of sexual intimacy.
Considering that Revenue Canada insists on snooping into every conceivable part of our lives, even to the point of spying on Canadians to establish criminal activity when reporting income tax exemptions and expenses, it is absurd to extend benefits under the Income Tax Act on the basis of private personal activity that cannot and must not be monitored. I make this point very clearly.
There is confusion between the Minister of Justice and the junior minister from Vancouver Centre. There will be court intrusion. Let me state again to single parents that going into the 21st century we recognize there are many single parent families, sometimes based on choice and sometimes based on uncontrolled events. This is why Canadian society has correctly decided, along with the rest of the world's nations, to extend special benefits to people with relationships similar to the heterosexual traditional family unit. Those benefits are extended to single parents, along with family units related by blood, marriage and adoption.
Here is something that is very troublesome. The fact that the government intentionally chose not to include a definition of the word conjugal turns that definition over to the courts. We have seen in at least a half a dozen cases in the last four or five years where the supreme court has intruded into where parliament wanted to go with particular law. I think of the Feeney case in British Columbia. Basically it excluded all sorts of evidence that was taken when a person was in flight from the police having just committed an absolutely terrible murder. He bludgeoned a person to death.
In the so-called Feeney case the supreme court said that all that evidence must be excluded because there was no warrant to walk into the person's house who had just fled the scene of the crime. The House of Commons, therefore, had to deal with this intrusion, and I call it an intrusion, by the supreme court clearly defining where the police can and cannot go. In fact the enforcement powers in Canada have had their ability to move forward and take enforcement actions seriously hampered by the supreme court.
I cite that as one example of the fact that we in parliament have a responsibility to the people of Canada who elected us to come forward with correct, clear and concise legislation. When the government turns around and will not define the word conjugal, it invites the supreme court and any other court to define that word. In other words it invites the courts to make laws that the Liberals do not have the intestinal fortitude to bring forward. When that sees piled on top of it this situation where the justice minister has come forward with an amendment that appears to be doing what Canadians want but in fact will not, is a serious problem in terms of this legislation.
This legislation in my judgment is not at all reflective of the values of people in Canadian society.