Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is right. I used to practise law, and I was involved in cases where a trial judge in a lower court would rule one way, five judges in the Court of Appeal would rule the same way, and then three judges of the Supreme Court of Canada would overrule them. That is the legal system.
The hon. member is suggesting one person was overruled. This was not some isolated case. This was the Court of Appeal of Ontario, of British Columbia, of Quebec, of Manitoba, of Nova Scotia, of Saskatchewan, of Yukon, and now of Newfoundland and Labrador. The Supreme Court of Canada said that all of those judgments were valid and granted vested rights to those people who had been married under those judgments.
I think it is a bit ingenuous to suggest in the House that somehow this was a minority legal opinion. It was not. It was the overwhelming legal opinion of the highest jurists of the land. It was one of the reasons that caused the attorney general in previous times not to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada. It was said to be an irresponsible act. In fact the attorney general had advice that the appeal would be lost.
As the chief law officer of the crown, the attorney general is obliged to give the best legal advice to the government not to take frivolous appeals and not to take litigants through cases in the highest courts of the land when it is known that the judgment will go against it. The attorney general of the day examined all the judgments and said that the prevailing legal opinion clearly was that the restriction in the Constitution was unconstitutional as held by all the courts that I referred to.
It is not fair to suggest that this is a minority view. On the contrary, this is the overwhelming majority view as set out by the courts.