Mr. Speaker, that is not an area of expertise that I have. I do not know how many other countries actually include marriage in the charter. That is my honest answer.
There is a question that I constantly ask myself about the civil marriage argument versus the civil union argument, and quite a few people use the member's question to lead into it. What would have happened in this country in the days when we first brought in civil marriage for opposite sex couples had we brought in civil unions? Had we done that, I think the civil union argument would work. We did not do that.
We also should ask ourselves why we have civil marriage. We brought in civil marriage because our religious institutions refused to marry certain people. Therefore, to give women proprietary rights and hereditary rights when their husbands died, we brought in civil marriage; if they were not married in a church they did not have those rights. We also brought in the civil marriage act to legitimize children born from those marriages.
We have to ask ourselves a number of questions. I appreciate the member's question, but I think there is a real legitimacy to having civil marriage and having it recognized by Parliament.