Mr. Speaker, the bill is essentially quite simple. It equates common law heterosexual with common law homosexual and moves very close to marriage for the purposes of rights, benefits and obligations. There is not a great deal of legal difference.
The operating premise of the bill is the equivalency of those three forms of relationships. No one, however, seems to be prepared to ask if they are equal forms of relationships. At the justice committee we heard from a number of equity seekers, all of whom were prepared to gloss over the essential premise of the bill. No one seemed prepared to ask the fundamental question of whether these relationships were in fact equal.
Mr. Speaker, you are a lawyer and I am a lawyer. If you give over the floor to lawyers you are more likely to hear arguments based on the charter of rights, which inevitably takes something of a preordained path. No one seems to be prepared to pull back the lens and ask some very difficult and troubling questions about the face of the family in the 21st century. Regardless of what any of us say in the House, and regardless of what any of us believe in the House, the face of the family is changing in the 21st century.
I continue to remain critical of the government's unwillingness to seriously engage in this discussion. I take the definition of marriage as the one given in the Geneva declaration as adopted by the World Congress. The natural family is a fundamental social unit inscribed in human nature and set out as a voluntary union of man and woman in a lifelong covenant of marriage. The natural family is defined by marriage, procreation, and in some cultures adoption.
I believe that marriage is a fundamental social unit of our society and can only be neglected at our peril. That and $1.10 will get a cup of coffee upstairs. To say that it is a soothing balm to some is to state the obvious. To say that it is like chalk on a blackboard for others is equally obvious.
Rather than repeat anecdotes and draw inferences from experience, I would like members to address their minds to the national longitudinal survey done by Statistics Canada entitled “Growing up with Mom and Dad—the intricate family life courses of Canadian children”. I would like to put some statistical flesh on the bones of the argument and ultimately return to why I am critical of the bill.
The survey by Statistics Canada found that 84% of children under 12 lived in two parent families and that slightly over 15% lived in a single parent family relationship. Of that 84%, about 75% were with two parent families which were neither blended nor reconstructed.
If we want to enhance our chances of instability we should live in a common law relationship over a period of 10 years. The likelihood of break-up is around 63%. If we want to enhance our chances of divorce, we should live common law first. That about doubles the chance of divorce, from about 13.6% to about 25% over the same 10 year period.
This is somewhat counterintuitive. It does not seem to make a lot of sense but the obvious observation and the common wisdom of the day is to try out the relationship first, take it for a spin around the block to see if they are compatible, et cetera.
Statistics Canada puts it somewhat more drily. The results are fairly clear.
Children born to parents who are married and who have not lived in common law union beforehand are approximately three times less likely to experience family breakdown than children whose parents were living in common law union when they were born and did not subsequently marry. Children born into traditional marriage with no prior common law union are least likely, 13.6%, to experience family breakdown before the age of 10. Children whose family lived in common law union before they were married are in an intermediary category. Family breakdown has been experienced by approximately 25% of the children where they were born prior to or after their parents' marriage.
The figures for children by common law unions are by all means the most spectacular. By age 10, 63.1% of them had experienced family breakdown confirming the more short-lived nature of the relationships even when there are children involved.
Who says that all relationships are created equal? Certainly children experience marriage without common law differently than children with common law, which is different again from those who are straight common law rather than gay common law. I do not have statistical information on gay common law, but one would have to assume that by statistics at least the rate of instability is similar to heterosexual common law.
There is not much doubt that children pay for the instability of their parents' relationship. Forty-one percent of single parent children have some kind of developmental problem as opposed to 26% for families that are intact. It is quite clear that children pay for divorce. It is a harsh truth and one that I as a divorced parent do not want to hear, but experientially and statistically it is quite true.
The premise of the bill is equality of relationships and many will argue vigorously that this is what the bill achieves.
In our rush to be inclusive and to practise equality we seem to have forgotten that marriage is much more than a few economic and social elements stitched together so as to justify parallel and apparently similar relationships. It cannot be assumed that the public good will be well served. Our enthusiasm to be equitable, as driven by charter decisions, is sending our society in a direction that assures us that all relationships will be created equal. Certainly our children know that this is not true. The question is when will their parents clue in.
Marriage breakdown over 10 years is approximately 13%. The breakup rate doubles with common law prior to marriage. Over the same period common law breakups are in the order of five times more likely than that of marriage.
I submit that these are not equal relationships and should not be regarded as same for the purposes of public policy. To add common law homosexual relationships to common law heterosexual relationships and say that they are the same thing in my view is a fallacy.
This frankly puts me in a bit of a dilemma because as a government member I take great pride in supporting the government. The government has gone a long way in introducing the definition of marriage into the bill.
I am still of the view that this is a deeply flawed bill and I wish frankly that the government had gone about it in exactly the opposite way, which is to engage in debate about all the forms of family in the late 20th century, to recognize that family sees many faces in the course of a lifetime and that arguably, dependency is the basis for determining whether there are rights, benefits and obligations. Once we determine that, then we can determine equality, whether it is same sex, opposite sex or no sex.
Those are my comments. I find the government over the course of time has moved in the right direction, however I still see the bill as being very flawed.