Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to make a few comments on the opposition motion that is before the House today. I had not intended to enter the debate. However I was in my office, busy dealing with some other things, when I suppose I was provoked into saying that I would not sit this one out or bite my tongue in the face of what seems to me to be a continuation of the kind of scaremongering and scandalmongering in which this particular party has indulged itself, in fact has almost perfected the art of, to the point where it sometimes is puzzling as to what it is those members think is accomplished by the way in which they go about tackling the issues that they bring before the House.
I want to be very clear that an opposition day is an opportunity to bring forward issues that one's party believes are the priority issues that Canadians would want addressed through their members of Parliament.
If the members of that party believe this is an issue of top priority, which I guess they do by the endless amounts of hand-wringing and hurling of accusations, then I guess they have a perfect right to bring it forward. However what provoked me was in listening to the member for Provencher, the sponsor of the motion before us today, attempting to discredit and devalue, with great indignity, and harrumphing the extremely important work of the Supreme Court of Canada and the independence of the Supreme Court of Canada, and suggesting that most people probably did not even know the names of the nine members of the Supreme Court of Canada.
After listening to the member I wondered what point he was trying to make. I will grant, absolutely and without a moment's hesitation, that the vast majority of Canadians could not stand and give us the names of the nine members of the Supreme Court of Canada. As a matter of fact I will admit that I had to really stretch to remember the names of the nine members of the Supreme Court.
Maybe it would be useful to read the names into the record if this is the real concern which the Alliance thinks needs to be debated on the floor of the House. We have the Right Honourable Madam Justice Beverley M. McLachlin; the Honourable Mr. Justice Charles Doherty Gonthier; the Honourable Mr. Justice Frank Iacobucci; the Honourable Mr. Justice John C. Major; the Honourable Mr. Justice Michel Bastarache; the Honourable Mr. Justice William Ian Corneil Binnie; the Honourable Madam Justice Louise Arbour; the Honourable Mr. Justice Louis LeBel; and the Honourable Madam Justice Marie Deschamps.
Now we have the names of the nine members of the Supreme Court of Canada, but what is the point of the member for Provencher?
He went on to talk about how the Supreme Court somehow usurps the powers and takes over the responsibilities of the Government of Canada.
I listened to my colleague from Dartmouth and she clearly set out something. I know the member who introduced this motion and the other members of his party understand that the Supreme Court does not usurp powers. The Supreme Court is there to interpret the laws that are passed by all governments and to ensure the rights and freedoms of all Canadians, which are guaranteed, are respected, protected and upheld.
It may surprise the member for Provencher to hear me say this but I agree with him that there are areas of social policy in which the government has been negligent. The government has not followed through in the way that it ought to, to be giving the kind of political leadership to some of the social policy issues of the day. I do not disagree with the member on that.
However, I then heard him say that an example of what is so wrong about what is going on is that repeatedly Supreme Court decisions have acknowledged that the rights, for example, of gay and lesbian Canadians are not being fully respected and protected. He uses that as an example of how the Supreme Court is somehow usurping powers.
I think it is absolutely clear. Unless that party will be absolutely insistent that it remain in the 19th century instead of dragged through the 20th century and into the 21st century, it is time to recognize that the definition of marriage as offered up by the Liberal government in 1999 is an antiquated shrunken down notion of marriage in today's context.
When I hear these members freak out at the notion that the definition of marriage should be modernized to recognize that it is not only a man and a woman in a relationship who want to make a commitment to one another, but that there are women who enter into loving lifelong relationships and men who enter into loving lifelong relationships who want to take on the commitments and benefits that go with that, I ask myself, what world are these Alliance members living in?
When the Supreme Courts points out that this is an issue that must be addressed, instead of beating up on the government for not sticking with the antiquated definition of marriage that it rammed through this place in 1999, that party should be applauding it because it recognizes that there needs to be some changes in the law to reflect reality.
When I see how insecure and traumatized some of these Alliance members are by the notion that there are relationships between women and there are relationships between men that are lifelong commitments, I wonder whether their problem is that they are insecure about marriage. And I am not suggesting about their own marriages. Maybe they are just insecure about their own sexual identity that they cannot cope with the reality that not everyone has the same sexual orientation that they do.
I have many criticisms of the government on a lot of fronts, but the fact that it finally opened up for public debate the issue of the definition of marriage is a step in the right direction. It was the Supreme Court of Canada, bringing in repeated decisions, that acknowledged that gays and lesbians are being discriminated against. This has finally forced the government to begin to address the issue. That is the system of checks and balances. That is what it means to have judicial review. It allows each and every citizen who feels their rights are not being respected and upheld to have an opportunity to have their day in court, and then to have a review and an appeal of a decision.
I do not agree with everything that the Supreme Court of Canada decides, but it scares the wits out of me to think that an official opposition party, that could become the government, would have that much disrespect not just for the current Supreme Court of Canada but for the whole system of checks and balances that is at the very heart of a healthy, dynamic democracy that is responsive to the needs, rights and freedoms of our citizens.