Mr. Speaker, I agree with the member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca that there are other issues that we should be dealing with. It is certainly because of a lack of action on the part of the Liberal government that we must deal with this issue here today.
It is not a matter of choice on our part. It is the fact that the Liberal government has failed to appeal recent court decisions. It has failed to bring in, as the member himself has pointed out, legislative options that could have been considered in this House. It has failed, frankly, over the last decade, to deal with difficult social issues that it seems to want to defer to courts, tribunals and so on. We must deal with this because time is of the essence and the federal government itself has bypassed Parliament and that has made it necessary here today.
This summer I enjoyed watching a French film entitled La grande séduction . It is a funny film. Even with my limited French, I did enjoy it a lot. It is about a fishing village on the east coast and its wild attempts to convince or seduce a doctor to take up residence in the quaint but secluded town. For the characters in the movie, almost anything and everything went. It was fair game, as far as they were concerned, in their efforts to keep the young doctor from finding the truth about what was actually happening in the town where the fishing had all dried up and there was not really much of a future for the young doctor.
It is much the same with the debate on the redefinition of marriage. All sorts of arguments are being offered to convince the public that it is necessary to change the definition to include homosexuals. Sometimes their arguments are impassioned; usually they are sincere. But the important thing, in reality, is that the Canadian public is being seduced—as in La Grande Séduction —by the Prime Minister's office and the Liberal Party.
It is true that there are other top of mind issues that have been in the news all summer long. We think of the SARS crisis, the forest fire crisis in British Columbia, mad cow disease and so on. But it is essential, because of the lack of action by the Liberal Party, that we deal with this idea of redefining marriage because it has been building momentum all summer.
Canadians want it dealt with and in a place where they can see what is happening, not behind closed doors in the Prime Minister's Office or in the courts through a ruling they read about in the newspapers instead of it having been done in public.
Proponents of the new definition to include gay couples have been encouraged by recent court rulings while opposition to it has been the single biggest source of mail and phone calls in my office for weeks. It is important to Canadians.
Most of the arguments and the people making them have been reasonable and thoughtful, on both sides frankly. I appreciate hearing all views, but I cannot help but conclude that those arguing that we have no choice but to proceed with redefining marriage are part of that grande séduction. They are trying to convince us that it is just the way it has to be, that there is no choice, that parliamentarians have their hands tied, and we simply must proceed as the federal government insists.
Many folks cannot understand how we found ourselves in this dilemma. Parliament supported a Reform Party--now the Canadian Alliance--motion in 1999 stating that marriage should be the union of one man and one woman and that the government should take all necessary steps to defend this definition.
Most people, when they looked on after 1999, looked at the facts. The Prime Minister and the member for LaSalle—Émard supported the motion. The current and past justice ministers supported it. The current health minister and former justice minister supported the motion. They all supported it and we all naturally assumed that they would do it.
The last bit of chicanery, the last part of the grande séduction, was to put together a committee to travel the country. Many members in the House have done that in an honest attempt to find the compromise solution that the member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca argued for, and I think properly so. The committee tried to find some way through this quagmire in a thoughtful way by listening to Canadians and experts on the subject.
However, that Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights was not allowed to even table a report or alternative, or a suggestion to the House of Commons. There was no follow through on taking all steps necessary. We are not talking about using the notwithstanding clause. We are talking about appealing the lower court decisions, asking for important input from Canadians and from parliamentarians, and coming up with thoughtful and considerate ways of dealing with what is obviously a big issue to many people, including the courts.
Instead we are told that we cannot discuss it, cannot vote on it, that we are not going to have further debate on it, and that it has to be the way the cabinet says. Perhaps the cabinet should have listened to the then justice minister, the current health minister, when she said during the 1999 debate:
Let me state again for the record that the government has no intention of changing the definition of marriage or of legislating same sex marriages...I fundamentally do not believe that it is necessary to change the definition of marriage in order to accommodate the equality issues around same sex partners which now face us as Canadians.
Absolutely. I agree with that statement. I did then and I do now. We need to be creative and get at it in a way that respects people on all sides of the debate, but it is not necessary, as the minister herself said, to redefine marriage in order to do that.
The Liberal government's promise to take all necessary steps to preserve the traditional definition of marriage has now been broken dramatically. Its new promise--we heard it again today from the current justice minister and he was passionate about it in his question and comment period--is to protect the right of religious organizations that refuse to marry same sex couples. That is the new promise, but needless to say such promises are not much comfort to those who have considerate, thoughtful but differing views.
The shelf life of a promise of a federal Liberal cabinet minister is less than four years. That is why there is a concern. People say they just do not trust cabinet ministers in the long term.
What about the courts, charter of rights, or the legal framework under which these decisions are made? It is important to remember that when the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was brought in and adopted, Parliament voted specifically not to include sexual orientation in the charter because it felt that was a good issue to be debated and decided here as a social issue affecting all Canadians. It is something that should be debated here. Even the current Prime Minister made the argument when he was justice minister that that was the way it should be done.
The Supreme Court has not been seized with this in the sense of asking it to define marriage, but when it ruled on this in the Egan case it said absolutely that marriage was a special relationship worthy of special protection. If the Supreme Court wants another reference to it to get another opinion that would be fine, but the last word it said on it was exactly that. The Supreme Court said it was a special relationship worthy of special protection.
To simply throw our hands up in the air, as the current Prime Minister and the Prime Minister-in-waiting from LaSalle--Émard have done, and say we cannot do anything because the courts have told us what to do and our hands are tied is not acceptable to me and it is not acceptable to millions of Canadians who expect a debate to take place on the floor of the House of Commons with a stand up vote, freely taken and freely given, so we can all stand and be accountable for our actions on both sides of the House. It is not acceptable to simply say the courts have decided so what can we do.
Another part of La grande séduction is the argument that opposing the redefinition of marriage makes one intolerant or worse. I heard that again this morning and that is repugnant to me. Certain ministers on the Liberal side and other members down this way have said that if we do not accept their argument we are bigots.That is not debate.
I have heard from thoughtful and concerned people on both sides of the House and they are not saying they will not listen to the arguments coming from down there or from a member of the homosexual community. As far as I am concerned those Liberal members are not worth listening to. It is unacceptable in the House of Commons that differing views from thoughtful and caring people who want to find a solution and a way through this quagmire, who respect people on both sides of the debate, are not allowed to voice their opinions and are instead shouted down as bigots or worse. That is not acceptable in the House of Commons.
I welcome thoughtful debate on divisive issues and difficult issues because this is the place to have it. That is what civilized people do. Some of parliament's finest hours have come after an agonizing debate and a thorough airing of divergent views.
What most offends me during this period of time is the growing tendency on the part of the Liberal Government of Canada to take every divisive issue, whether it is sexual orientation, the redefinition of marriage, what we should do on international agreements and tribunals, what we should do with reproductive technology, or what we should do with any divisive or difficult issue, and hand it off to tribunals, unelected courts, unelected people, international groups, ex-parliamentarians and so on, and not make a decision here in the House of Commons where it should be taken.
It is not acceptable for members to say, as one of the Liberals said last week, that it is offensive to stand and be counted. It is part of La grande séduction to say that we do not have to stand and be counted. We should stand and be counted. We will be standing and we will be counting tonight. When that decision is taken, people will see not only what we have said but how we stood in the wall and in the breach for what we believe in. We have to justify it. We have to stand. We will be counted tonight.