Mr. Speaker, I am sharing my time with my colleague and friend from Fraser Valley.
I stand today with some degree of ambivalence on this issue. I will get to that a little later. In the grand scheme of things how important is this issue, given the more pressing issues that are affecting Canadians from coast to coast?
The issue at hand is whether we should change the definition of marriage and whether it should include individuals of same sex or whether we should keep it in its traditional definition of those who are of opposite sex.
There are two sides to this issue. I want to stand back and paraphrase, as my colleague from northern British Columbia mentioned, can we accommodate both sides. Can we accommodate the notion that homosexual couples can be loving and caring and live in relationships and should be treated in the same fashion as those of us who heterosexual or does it have to change? Can we respect the traditional definition of marriage while still respecting the right of homosexual individuals to live in long term relationships and receive the same benefits and rights as those who are heterosexual?
I believe we can. I believe that this is an issue of respect for both sides. In doing so, both sides can be respected.
I believe also that the radicals on both sides will never be accommodated. Of course that is the situation in most arguments.
Someone mentioned that this is equivalent to the days when women could not vote, the days south of the border when blacks could not vote, that certain groups could not receive the same benefits as others, that they were truly discriminated against on the basis of tangible benefits to the individual or group.
I would argue that is not the issue here today. I defy anyone in the House to tell me that in changing the definition of marriage that somehow it will change in some way the inequality that has taken place between heterosexual couples and homosexual couples. Is there a tangible benefit that would be accrued to homosexual couples by changing the definition of marriage? I would argue that there is not one.
In the dark days years ago homosexual couples, as capable as heterosexual couples of living in committed, long term, dependent, loving, caring relationships, did not have access to the same financial benefits as heterosexual couples had. Thankfully those days are over. Homosexual couples do receive the same medical benefits, pension benefits, survivor benefits as heterosexual couples.
For individuals living in a long term relationship, the issue at hand is not the gender of the two people involved. The issue at hand is one of dependency and a long term situation. Thankfully the days when that discrimination took place are over.
However that is not what we are talking about here today. We are talking about simply changing the definition of marriage.
My colleague, who was formerly a Reform member, Ian McClelland, put forth a very intelligent bill in the 1993 to 1997 Parliament calling for registered domestic partnerships. Registered domestic partnerships would be based on two people regardless of their gender who chose not to get married in the traditional sense. They would be defined and enshrined in a partnership and would acquire and accrue the same financial and tangible benefits as those who lived in a marriage situation.
If the House had chosen to take the situation at hand seriously, addressed the issued and adopted the solution by my colleague, Ian McClelland, then we probably would not be debating this motion here today. The issue would have been dealt with in a respectful and fair fashion by both those who believe in not changing the traditional definition and those individuals who believe the definition ought to change.
I suggest that the government of the day should indeed pursue that course which I think would be respectful of both groups.
Few issues have created more calls to my office than this one.
I decided to say to the people of my riding that I would vote according to what they told me. That did not include those who called my office in an unscientific fashion. I polled randomly the people in my riding. Of the thousands of letters I sent out, I received a significant number back. Of the letters I received back, 120 people said to change the definition of marriage and 420 people said not to change it. That is the way I will vote.
At the end of the day I hope we get to an era when sexual orientation does not matter. Those individuals who choose to shake one's hand and say that they are so-and-so and they are heterosexual are irrelevant. Similarly, those people who are gay and try to introduce themselves as homosexual do not matter. A person's sexual orientation does not matter. What matters is that we are loving, caring, considerate and responsible and that we are individuals who give toward society, who try to be inclusive and are tolerant. Those are the qualities I argue are important for individuals, societies and groups and I hope we focus on that.
We like to somehow castigate the judges, but the judges have taken their decisions because the House has failed to deal with this issue. We need not and should not be slamming the judges because they are doing what Parliament has failed to do. If we had been on the ball and taken our responsibilities seriously to deal with issues both controversial and non-controversial, not only would we have done the job that the Canadian public asked us to do, but we would have done what was right. We would be responsible and we would be dealing with the issues that the Canadian public has asked of us and for which it pays our salaries.
I also want to say that I am deeply angry and frustrated. This issue has dominated the House for a long time. It dominates the media. I just came back this summer from seeing children who had been prostituted on the streets since the age of 11 to feed their parents IV drug habits. They are now in their teenage years and they are HIV positive, they have hepatitis and they are still on the streets. I was dealing with people who had mental disorders and who lived on the streets. They have fallen through the cracks. They are subject to violence and die by their own hands or sometimes by other's hands.
I just came back from West Africa two nights ago where I saw children who had their arms chopped off by rebels. I met women who had been gang raped. I met orphans who had watched their parents hacked to death. I saw many children who had watched their parents burn to death. I saw people living in a toilet.
The House should be dealing with those issues and others. We should be dealing with the people in our country who cannot get a job. We should be dealing with the individuals who are aged and live at home in quiet desperation and pain because they do not have access to the health care our system should be providing. Some individuals who gave to their country and fought in wars cannot get access to home care and live sometimes in their own excrement because they do not have anybody to care for them.
Is that the Canada we want? Are those the issues with which the House is dealing? No, it is not. It is a shame and a pox on all in our House in my view that we debate this issue, important to some, but in the grand scheme of things there are many larger issues of life and death that are affecting Canadians and indeed people in other parts of the world with which we are not dealing.
Why are we not dealing with the number one issue that Canadians care about, which is health care? Why do we allow the Senate report, which is an excellent report, and the Romanow report to sit collecting dust? Why are we not having a meaningful debate on our defence forces so we can give them the tools to do their job?
My time is up, Mr. Speaker, but I just ask the government, in the lukewarm, pea soup legislative agenda that it has introduced in the House, why is it not dealing with the issues that Canadians care about, that mean something to Canadians and can relieve their suffering, their pain and will save lives?