Madam Speaker, certainly the question is valid with regard to rights.
We all understand that since the Constitution and the charter have come in, there has been an infringement on the rights of gay and lesbian persons because they have not had access to the institution of marriage. That is true. It always has been, right from the beginning. It is not something that was imposed as we went along. It is something that was enshrined when the Constitution was first crafted. The authors of the Constitution and the charter acknowledge that. They knew and comprehended it, but they felt that they were not going to put sexual orientation as a prohibited ground for discrimination even within the charter.
Yes, there is a rights violation. It has been acknowledged by every court in every case. The issue is whether or not the infringement on those rights is reasonably justified in a free and democratic society. This is a section 1 analysis. It is a question of what one does when virtually every mainstream religion defines marriage as between a man and a woman. It has some consequences when the laws of Canada will now say it is two people. It is a very delicate balance and the courts, until the Ontario Court of Appeal decision, basically said that on balance the infringement was reasonably justified. The Ontario court decided that the balance had shifted.