Mr. Speaker, first, I would say that the government should not have referred this bill to the Supreme Court, and that this is a question the answer to which we have known from the outset. We should have proceeded before the last election, regardless of the electoral considerations that were driving this government. Had it not been for the Prime Minister's dithering, the Leader of the Opposition would not have been able to raise this issue.
Having said that, in my opinion, there is no option but to use the notwithstanding clause if we want to prevent such a thing. Indeed, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms talks about reasonable limits, and it would be unreasonable to decide that, because of their sexual orientation, a man and a woman do not have the same rights. In my opinion, this is the fundamental issue.
I am also convinced that we must adopt this bill, and that we must do so at the earliest opportunity, to avoid dividing our society and to make it clear that the issues that we debated in the past, namely abortion and divorce—which took us to the same place—have now been accepted by society and are now behind us. Indeed, divorced people are no longer stigmatized, as they were in the 1960s.
Oddly, many people who were opposed to giving women the right to vote are now on the same side as those who, today, are opposed to same sex marriage.
This is what I meant when I talked about progress. Do we recognize that all people are born equal and free, and that they can live their lives equal and free? That is the fundamental issue.