Mr. Speaker, those are all good points that have been raised and I thank the member for bringing them forward.
These are exactly the kinds of discussions that we should have in Parliament. It should not be up to the courts to dictate this issue for us. I take issue not with the member's comments as much as I do with the appropriation by the courts of this entire social policy issue, effectively stifling debate in the House. This is a complex matter.
I refer the courts and the member to some of the earlier charter decisions where the courts said that they did not create these rights in a vacuum, that they looked at the historical, cultural, social and all aspects of our society in arriving at a definition of what these principles include. What we increasingly have seen is the courts simply substituting their own political decision for that of elected representatives.
There should be deference by the courts in respect of defining this kind of an issue when they knew that this was an area of the law that was specifically reserved to Parliament, not only under the BNA Act of 1867 or the Constitution Act, 1867, but through the votes that led up to the debate of the final drafting of the charter.
The comments that the member makes are worthy of debate and the place to debate them is here. I would like to hear the Supreme Court of Canada say that those lower courts were wrong in appropriating that jurisdiction, that the hot potato should be sent back to Parliament and let parliamentarians stand, earn their money and make the decisions.