Madam Speaker, before I start I would like to say that we will obviously support this bill. We find it interesting because it would eliminate the adjective illegitimate when referring to a child.
I also want to congratulate my colleague from Ottawa Centre for his insight and for introducing Bill C-408.
I will not use up my ten minutes as it would appear that we will have to consider another bill later. We will debate this at a later date.
I would simply like to state a very definite opinion regarding the bill. In Quebec, theses words have been removed from the civil code since 1994. In recent history, being called illegitimate meant a lot of things for children in their daily life.
Recently, I was listening to a program coming from the United States. I listened to children who had been labelled illegitimate, children who had been put up for adoption or institutionalized. They were telling their story. Today, they are between 40 and 45 years old or even less. They were talking about how they were treated when they were young and how the fact that they were branded illegitimate marked them for life.
Right here, in Canada, we have had the same kind of problems, including the Duplessis orphans. We have seen the way orphans were treated in orphanages in Newfoundland and nearby in Ontario. We have just seen what it was like to be considered illegitimate in our societies that are supposed to be free and respectful of individual rights.
We had yet another example in the debate just concluded in Ireland. In case my colleagues did not know, this debate has lasted for years in Ireland, and it has just concluded now. Our societies change. It is important, at least that is what the Bloc Quebecois thinks, that we take that word out of the criminal code. A child cannot be illegitimate. A child is the son or daughter of a mother and father. Being born cannot be illegitimate. Legally, a child cannot be illegitimate.
That is the gist of my argument. I want to see us go a little further. I have not yet seen the new bill the government intends to introduce, but I hope it goes a little further still. I hope that the Canadian government will look at what has been done with the revision of the Quebec civil code, and that it will at the very least draw upon what has been done, and well done, therein.
Certain words have been taken out. As far as is possible, I would like to see the entire Criminal Code looked at, not just the parts relating to children, as have been proposed by my colleague for Ottawa Centre—whom I again congratulate and thank—but a complete review of the criminal code in order to seek out everything that, in my opinion, does not do justice to people and still hangs on to what I would call stuff from the past. We are still dragging along baggage from the past, tradition that is, to my way of thinking, unhealthy, and this is particularly the case with the matter of concern to us at present.
Since we shall have to get back to the debate raised by my colleague, as I have said, I merely wanted him to know that we were in agreement with his bill. We hope that the one to be introduced by the government will go a little further still.