Debates of June 27th, 2005

Civil Marriage Act

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Marcel Proulx)]

The House has heard the terms of the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Some hon. members]

No.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Marcel Proulx)]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Marcel Proulx)]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Marcel Proulx)]

In my opinion the nays have it.

And more than five members having risen:

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Marcel Proulx)]

Call in the members.

[Randy White, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, now that the dictator has spoken on the other side, I would like some clarification on whether, if this motion is agreed to, third reading will take place tomorrow or this evening. I wonder if that could be clarified because it is important to know whether the group of dictators would like to keep the debate going tonight until midnight or tomorrow.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Marcel Proulx)]

In answer to the hon. member for Abbotsford, the House is to adjourn at midnight tonight. Therefore, third reading will begin tomorrow morning, if the vote is carried.

(The House divided on the motion, which was agreed to on the following division:)

[The Speaker]

I declare the motion carried.

The House resumed consideration of Bill C-38, An Act respecting certain aspects of legal capacity for marriage for civil purposes, as reported (with amendments) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I will be taking a different tack tonight. I will look at the process that has led us to be facing Bill C-38 at report stage and closure.

I must say, in respect of the bill itself, that marriage essentially is the union of two people, a man and a woman, who consummate the relationship with sexual relations with the potential to procreate. Marriage has well been said to be something more than a contract, either religious or civil, to be an institution, and it should remain that way. For the Liberal Party, it is more about politics, power and arrogance than it is about the essence of Bill C-38.

The government was prepared to make deals to keep its own members on side by promising broad committee hearings and not introducing the bill past report stage and third reading until fall. Then, when the Liberals were able to make a bigger deal, they decided to proceed to ram the bill through both stages. There will be a price for such an action and the Prime Minister and his enforcers shall pay the ultimate price at the ballot box.

Surely, the public at large will not let them get away with this. For those in the Liberal Party who oppose Bill C-38, the marriage bill, but voted with the government in a sneak manoeuvre to pass Bill C-48, the NDP budget bill, without notice, can certainly talk the talk, but they fall far short of walking the walk.

Let me speak briefly about procedures being used in this House that preclude the giving of notice. I could hardly believe that in a democracy, in a free and democratic country like Canada, the governing party would resort to procedures that would achieve their end by means of subterfuge and subtleness.

Surely, on an important issue like the NDP budget and Bill C-38, the government should at the very least provide notice of its intention and face the issue fair and square, so that the representatives of the people of Canada can make their views known.

Instead, what did the Liberals did? According to a Canadian Press report of June 25, by 8:30 p.m. Thursday last week, the Liberals were hiding out in the government lobby with one MP stating that the Liberals were going to bushwhack the Conservatives. I am sorry for the confused logic. It is really an affront and it is a bushwhacking of democracy.

I left the House at around 9:00 p.m. to have supper with my wife. Before I was finished supper, and without notice, Bill C-48 was up for a vote. Something as important as a budget vote was being snuck through the House. In all of my life, I have never heard or seen anything like it. The Liberals could not hijack democracy without the complicity of the NDP and the Bloc.

It is understandable that the NDP would engage in a procedure such as this as the leader himself asked if putting aside corruption, would the Minister of Finance change the budget? The NDP were prepared to make a deal regardless of the tactics or the manners of the government.

However, the Bloc, who opposed the NDP budget, Bill C-48, had nothing to gain or lose by the vote being taken on Thursday or on Monday, when we had a full contingent of our members in the House. To agree to Bill C-48 being placed before the House without notice was either intentional mischief or done for consideration of some kind. I can see no other rational conclusion. In either case, such actions are odious and any trust on my part from here on in will have to be earned.

All these steps were taken to force Bill C-38 to remain on its own, undressed, in full view of closure motions, limits on debate, and the concurrence of three parties to shove it through. Then on a foundation that it accepts important and significant matters, the government disposes it without notice given to the representatives of the people of Canada. That is wrong.

Any debate in this circumstance, in this context, is a farce and simply a matter of the government trying to appear magnanimous when it knows full well, it is about to drop the hammer to close matters off, as we just witnessed in this House tonight. I find this offensive. The fix, as they say, is in.

Indeed, this type of conduct may be what is necessary to awaken a sleeping giant. Those who agree with Bill C-38 and whose views will be made known in the ballot box in the next election will find out who is the ultimate judge in this particular case.

The Saskatoon Star Phoenix , on June 25, stated with reference to the government's conduct that “Thursday was the third time such a stunt was used in Canada's history”, and a stunt it was. I doubt it was ever used in such an important and significant a situation as a budget bill and a bill that redefines the definition of marriage. Obviously, it has never been done in this context. This is an all-time first and an all-time low in terms of its use in the history of this great country we call Canada.

Let us have a look at what brought us here today. Last week on Thursday morning, under Standing Order 57, a minister of the Crown served notice that debate with respect to extending the sitting of this House should not be further adjourned, with the provision that no member shall be allowed to rise to speak after 8:00 p.m., when a vote was held with respect to this motion. To put it simply, it was a closure notice with a time limit on speeches on an important issue such as we face here today. That was wrong and the government will pay the price for that.

Let us have a look at the motion itself, and I spoke to it the other day. The motion was prefaced by saying “notwithstanding any Standing Order or usual practice”. In other words, it was overriding anything that could stand in the way of the motion by way of Standing Order or usual practices. We put those aside. What does the motion go on to say? Essentially, that the sitting would continue until a minister of the Crown proposed, without notice, a motion to adjourn.

In other words, a minister could unilaterally have this House adjourn at any time without notice. It has come to this. What if anything or is there anything the government might not do to achieve its end? This seemed to me to be a heavy-handed approach and something one would not expect in this country.

This stunt, as referred to in the Star Phoenix , took place when the NDP, the Liberals, and the Bloc agreed that the Minister could propose to pass Bill C-48 without notice, without debate or amendment.

The government dispensed with the Standing Orders and usual practices to its advantage in circumstances that the Standing Orders were never intended to be used. It is in these circumstances, with this play of characters in office, that Bill C-38 finds itself.

What hope is there for those who oppose its passage? The hope is in the ballot box where they will have an opportunity to remove these characters from office.

The government tried to tie Bill C-48 to this bill in case it needed to apply to the Speaker for extension of the sittings, but then decoupled it when they and the sneaky, no-notice NDP budget Bill C-48 was voted in, in the middle of the night last Thursday.

Father Raymond J. de Souza said, “When holding unto office becomes the beginning and end of all activity, there are no more politics, just the machinations of power”. He went on to say that the corruption of our politics is now complete.

He refers to an article in the Toronto Sun that states, “--the time has come to cool the fury in Parliament, to ease the pressure on the Prime Minister to resort to seedy vote buying”. He says that Canada's largest circulation newspaper and ardent supporter of the Liberal Party concludes that the Prime Minister is engaged in seedy behaviour but excuses it on the grounds that otherwise he would be defeated by the opposition. It is all about power and if a little seedy vote buying is necessary, so be it.

He says what is cynicism in politics? It is the belief that politics is not about the common good, nor what one sincerely believes is right for the country, but only what is personally advantageous to the office holder. It is a Prime Minister's Chief of Staff discussing how one could go about trading offices for votes without officially trading offices for votes.

The mockery of the process of Bill C-38 in committee has caused the Liberal member for London—Fanshawe, to his credit, to leave the party and sit as an independent. Why? Because he knew what the Prime Minister promised, he would not deliver.

He observed what we did, the tricky procedural moves in committee such as removing Liberal MPs in exchange for others who would vote in correct ways, having members leave a meeting to cause it to adjourn for lack of quorum, calling witnesses in batches of four on very short notice, limiting witnesses to be called, and heavily stacking the Liberal committee members and the witnesses in favour of same sex marriage. Is this evidence of the Prime Minister's solemn word for full, fair and meaningful public hearings? Of course not.

The committee was asked to work to an unnecessary and premature deadline to report to the House. The member went on to state that witnesses were being given inadequate notice to appear at committee hearing and some have been rudely treated when they have attended. He said that the process as it was unfolding was unfair and perfunctory at best, and that it was not what he agreed to as a proper democratic consultation on such a major piece of legislation as the proposed definition of marriage. He added that in his view, the government had no democratic mandate from the people of Canada to redefine marriage.

I wish to conclude with Chantal Hébert's comments in the Toronto Star which could well be prophetic. She said:

Given the lengths to which [the Prime Minister] and his team have gone just to prolong the life of their minority government for a few more months, one has to wonder how many more ethical niceties they would dispense with--

Having heard [the Prime Minister's] chief-of-staff Tim Murphy nod and wink and dress up the Liberal window with future government considerations, can anyone doubt that this is an administration that is just as likely to live and die by the rule that the end justifies the means?

The democratic deficit [the Prime Minister] so likes to wax lyrical about has been compounded into an ethical one. And past sins of omission and/or commission have been overshadowed by current, in-your-face transgressions...It is a malaise that permeates the upper reaches of the government.

So much for the loyalty of the country. Anything the Prime Minister said suggesting that he encouraged a full debate on Bill C-38 in these sittings was, simply put, hogwash. The price the Prime Minister will pay will be paid at the ballot box. He cannot get away with such treachery as we witnessed in the House for this long. The voters will see to it. Marriage should be defined as the union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others with no exceptions, no amendments, period.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the hon. member's comments on this particular topic, which is extremely sensitive. It has evoked a lot of emotion from a lot of people in many quarters. All of us understand the sensitivity of this issue because all of us in our ridings have seen how divisive it has been in so many quarters. It is important for any government to respond in a responsible fashion.

I have a couple of questions for the hon. member. As members know full well, it costs about $20,000 an hour to keep this House open. In the course of the debate, every single hour that we are here, those hours are costing the taxpayers money. If we keep on debating and debating, we have to ask ourselves, are we actually going to change anything? Would a continuation of this debate change anybody's mind and anybody's opinion?

The reality is that all members who have dealt with this issue have made up their minds whether they are for or against. Further debate is not going to change anything. There are no more amendments. There is nothing that can be put forward that is going to change anything.

The hon. member said that marriage is a union between a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, with the potential to procreate. Does that mean that women over the age of 50 who get married do not have a marriage?

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Mr. Speaker, it is quite interesting that this member would be concerned about how much it costs to operate this House. This bill needs to be opposed and the costs should be put in the background.

Where was this member when this House was being filibustered by his own party for days on end, when they took away supply days because they were not prepared to face a confidence motion? The Liberals went for a week or more trying to skirt that issue, filibustering on their own committee reports.

What was that costing per hour, and what was the purpose of that, except to cling to power at all costs? What about spending $4.6 billion? We will wait to see what the cost will be for the little side deal that was made to invoke closure over the last little while. There may be some consideration coming out sooner. They blow billions of dollars and they are afraid to keep this House open a little longer so they can hear responsible arguments on Bill C-38.

As far as the committee is concerned, what happened to the Prime Minister's promise to keep the committee going? We would not have to be sitting here if the Prime Minister had kept his promise to have broad consultations in committee, allow the committee to have more hearings, and allow positive injections. The reason we are still sitting is because of the member opposite who voted for this House to be extended without notice.

What happened when the Liberals took away our supply day motions, and when they lost the confidence of this House indirectly? They had a constitutional obligation to bring the issue of confidence before this House, but they used a week because it was not convenient for the Prime Minister. He flew around the country and gave out goodies, spent money, and used the machinery of power and government jets when he had no authority and no constitutional basis to do that. He did that simply to cling to power illegitimately and to legitimize government, and that was wrong.

As far as marriage is concerned, if the hon. member would listen very closely, it is the potential to procreate, and one lady and one man have the potential to procreate naturally, biologically, and not otherwise. That is the phrase “potential to procreate”. I would say that there is more to this issue than a few dollars and the machinations of clinging to power at all costs.

We should not be here at all. This bill should be in committee. This bill should not be here. We are in a democracy and ought to be experiencing it, but senior parliamentarians fail to see that and they ought to know better, but they do not.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, our colleague from the Conservative Party was pretty concerned about Bill C-48 last week. It was a good bill because it gave $1.5 billion to students to cut their debt and $1.5 billion for affordable housing. I want to ask the hon. member, why did he go for dinner with his wife at 9:30 p.m. instead of being on duty until 12:00 midnight and doing his duty by voting against the bill if he did not like it?

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I am not even sure the last question deserves an answer. However, it annoys me that bills as important as Bill C-48 and Bill C-38 would come to the House without notice and be voted on while I was having dinner. I came back to the House. I have been in the House more often than that member.

The government ought to be responsible and take its duty seriously. Bill C-48 has no plan, it has nothing. How many housing units were build by the government in 11 years? There were very little for the money spent. The Liberals spent $1 billion with not a house being built.

There are more people living in poverty today than 11 years ago. There are more people homeless on the street while the government has been in office. That is something to be noted.

[Leon Benoit, Conservative, Vegreville—Wainwright, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am here to speak the report stage of Bill C-38, the same sex marriage bill. In the 10 minutes I have allocated, and that is another issue which I will speak about, I will talk about why we are here today, the same sex marriage bill. I also will talk about how this could have been avoided and where we can go from here.

With the government invoking time allocation at report stage and third reading, we will be voting on the legislation tomorrow night and there is nothing we can do about it now except to be here to vote and we will. Bill C-38 will probably pass tomorrow night, but that will not be the end of it.

Why are we debating Bill C-38 today? That is an important question. Just a few years ago the current Deputy Prime Minister was in the House defending marriage as the union of one man and one woman. She said that nothing would ever happen to change that and anybody who would suggest that would be speaking absurdity and all kinds of things like that.

The Deputy Prime Minister rose on the opposition motion brought forward by our party back in 1999 and speaking on behalf of the government in a carefully crafted speech she said:

The definition of marriage is already clear in law in Canada as the union of two persons of the opposite sex. Counsel from my department have successfully defended, and will continue to defend this concept of marriage....I continue to believe that it is not necessary to change well-understood concepts of spouse and marriage to deal with any fairness considerations the courts and tribunals...

She went on later to say:

The institution of marriage is of great importance to large numbers of Canadians, and the definition of marriage as found in the hon. member's motion is clear in law.

This was one of her closing statements, “I fundamentally do not believe that it is necessary to change the definition of marriage” as the union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others.

Why are we debating Bill C-38 today? That is an important question and a question I have a great deal of difficulty understanding.

We know that about two-thirds of Canadians do not support this legislation. I did a survey of my constituents and received thousands of returns. About 98% of those who responded to my questionnaire, which was dropped at every household in the constituency, supported marriage as the union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others. Many of my colleagues have done similar types of surveys and they have found the same results. Polling nationally showed that two-thirds of Canadians do not support the legislation. In my constituency it is much higher.

Why are we debating Bill C-38 today? It seems to me that the government is so obsessed with the issue of same sex marriage that it will not let it go. In the 12 years I have been here I do not remember closure being used in the House the way the Liberals used it on Bill C-48, the NDP budget bill. If Bill C-48 had been defeated, the government would have been defeated and Bill C-38, the civil marriage bill, would not be here today and we would not be dealing with it.

It is not only the government that is obsessed with same sex marriage, but the NDP is also obsessed with this issue. This is the first time the NDP has voted with the government in favour of closure and now today on time allocation.

The Bloc is obsessed with the issue of same sex marriage as well. The Bloc members, who are generally democrats and would not support time allocation or closure, are so obsessed that in the last two days they have formed this unholy alliance with the government; the separatists, the government and the socialists. They have signed an agreement and together they are doing everything they can, including bypassing the normal rules of the House of Commons, to push the bill through.

This is an unholy alliance and this is why we are here today debating Bill C-38. Those three parties are obsessed with the same sex marriage issue. Because of that, they made this deal in bed together, the government with the Bloc and the socialists.

How could this have been avoided? First, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Prime Minister and many members of the Liberal caucus could show that they believe what they say. Many of them, including the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister, said a few short years ago that they did not support same sex marriage and that they believed that marriage should be retained as the union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others. Therefore, there should be no reason for this bill to be debated today.

More recent, a free vote, which means all cabinet and all parliamentary secretaries in the governing party, would have killed the legislation at second reading. That is how this could have been avoided.

I want to talk a little about that. The government put our a document last week on parliamentary reform. I looked through that little booklet and I was shocked at what I saw. The document is from the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons. It is entitled, “First Annual Report on Democratic Reform”. What a joke. The things the government has pointed to as being changes it has made to make this place more democratic are exactly the opposite to what in reality has happened. However, there are some things of interest in there.

For example, it talks about how often the government has used the one line whip, the two line whip and the three line whip. I want to explain that. A one line whip is when the government says that it is a completely free vote. A two line whip is when the backbenchers can vote freely on the issue but cabinet and parliamentary secretaries must toe the government line. A three line vote is when all members of the Liberal Party are expected to toe the government line.

The government's own numbers in the document say that there were zero one line votes. That means no free votes whatsoever in the time that was documented in this report. Eighty-two of the votes were two line votes, including the marriage bill vote. That means that half of the Liberal caucus members are not free to represent their constituents on the important issue of marriage, cabinet ministers and parliamentary secretaries. A three line whip was used 18% of the time. There was not one single free vote on government legislation.

I want to go to my third point. Where do we go from here? I want to say without a doubt, even if this bill passes tomorrow, which it probably will, that is not the end of the issue. The Conservative Party and the Leader of the Conservative Party are committed to bringing this back to the House when we form the government and we will have a truly free vote on this issue.

We know, as I have said before, that about two-thirds of Canadians support the option where marriage is retained as the union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others. Legal civil unions in Canada give all the rights that married couples have to those who want to be involved in a civil union. That is what we will put before the House. We will put options before the House and there will be a free vote.

Under a Conservative government I fully believe same sex marriage will be struck down and we will move on to become a country where we have marriage enshrined as the union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others.

[David Anderson, Liberal, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member who has just taken his seat frequently asked why we are here. He went on to refer to the comments of the Deputy Prime Minister six years ago. What he failed to point out was a series of court decisions that dealt with the issue of marriage in seven provinces and one territory, all of which, based on the charter, said that it was discriminatory to deny the institution of marriage to same sex couples.

First, is the member aware of that cause for the change? Second, is he aware of the fact that at the present time, thanks to these court decisions, the vast majority of Canadians already live in jurisdictions where same sex marriages are legal. Is he aware of those two facts, and if so, why did he not tell the House when he was asking why we are here?

The government is attempting to have a uniform policy across the country so there is no difference between the provinces. I am sure he is well aware of that but if he is not, perhaps he would like to inform the House.

[Leon Benoit, Conservative, Vegreville—Wainwright, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate those questions from the member. I will answer the second one first, which was whether I was aware of the decisions the courts have made. Of course I was aware but I would like to know the member's thoughts on whether the courts should be making law in this country. I do not believe it should be up to the courts to make the law.

I ask the member if he is aware that the Supreme Court said very clearly that it was up to Parliament to decide this issue, not the courts. What the Conservative Party will certainly do on this issue is protect the rights of all those who are married. They will be allowed to remain, if they choose, in a civil union and their rights will be protected but they will not be married under the law. That will be uniform across the country.

I am sorry but I have actually forgotten the member's first question, so I will have to wait for the next one.

[Gary Goodyear, Conservative, Cambridge, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we have a crisis in Canada which the courts have ruled is a human rights violation, and that is the complete failure of the Liberal Party to fix the health care system. I would like the member's comments as to why we are debating this issue that can wait, while Canadians are dying in waiting lines.

[Leon Benoit, Conservative, Vegreville—Wainwright, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the member is asking a question that is impossible for me to answer or understand in fact.

We have an issue as critical as protecting the health care of Canadians. The Supreme Court has ruled that the Liberals have made such a mess of it that to protect the rights of Canadians under the Constitution they must have access to private health care. With that decision made, do they deal with that issue? No, they do not. Instead they deal with this issue of same sex marriage which is not supported by a full two-thirds of the Canadian population. In my constituency, 98% do not support it. Yet they are not dealing with an issue that is far more important and actually is an issue that has to be and should be dealt with. Instead, they choose to deal with this issue of putting in place same sex marriage.

I cannot understand it and I cannot answer the member's question because, quite frankly, it shows that the government has its priorities all messed up.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence]

Mr. Speaker, I have listened with great interest to the comments coming from the other side. I understand and I think all of us understand that this is a very sensitive issue. Emotions are inflamed on this for many reasons.

I want to share with the House a little story. As I was walking up to the House a little while ago there were a couple of people who were very big supporters of the Conservative Party and their big issue was the issue of marriage. They wanted to support the status quo or the historical status quo.

When I asked those people what would happen if Bill C-38 did not pass in the House, they said that same sex marriages would no longer be legal and that only marriages between a man and a woman would be allowed in Canada. I told them that they were wrong because marriage between same sex couples was already legal in eight provinces and one territory. That is the reality.

For those who oppose this, only one rational debate can occur, and that is on whether to use the notwithstanding clause under the charter. Under the law that is the only rational debate for those who choose to oppose this. Anything else is just hot air.

They may wish for life to be different. They may wish to remove this bill from the parliamentary calendar, they may wish that it had never existed, as was mentioned from the other side, and they may wish that marriage between same sex couples was illegal but that is not the case.

The other side may wish to simply say that with the stroke of a pen, without getting into the notwithstanding clause, that they may choose to simply bring a bill to this House to say that we want to reverse history. Would that make any difference? No, it would not. Whether or not the other side wishes something does not make it a reality.

At the end of the day, all of us have to live within the context of the law and the Constitution. The law and the Constitution state very clearly that if a party wants to change through legislation dictums that have come through from the lower courts, they have to use the notwithstanding clause.

The Conservatives are being utterly disingenuous in not offering that option. Unless they offer that option, they may as well sign on to this bill and go home to their families, go home to their constituents and say the bill has passed. However they will not do that and that is utterly disingenuous.

I want to get to some other issues that were raised today. I want to talk about the fact that in eight provinces and one territory this is the law. Indeed, in many other countries this is the law. Some of the people who are opposed to this think that the sky will fall, that somehow incest will be legalized, that some people will marry their brothers or their sisters, or that some other concoction will be legal.

The reality is that is not the case. In those countries in Europe that have adopted it or those provinces and that territory in our country that have adopted it, one would be hard-pressed for those who oppose this particular bill to point those out and say that the sky has fallen in those provinces and that territory. The reality is that is not the case.

I think what will happen is that 10 years down the road we will all look at this and say how silly we were to have evoked such venom against this particular bill. At the end of the day, the bill does not change my heterosexuality. It does not change anybody else's marriage. It does not change anything. It simply includes and extends a little bit the boundaries of civil marriage to those who love each other and who choose to enter into marriage.

What we need today is a lot more love and a little less hatred. I think we would all be a little bit better off at the end of the day. At the end of the day the bill will not hurt anyone who has a religious marriage. The bill also will not hurt or damage the rights of churches, synagogues or temples to marry or not marry whomever they choose. It will not infringe upon those rights.

The bill is about civil marriage, not religious marriage. The courts have been very clear that those, for example, who wanted to have a situation where people could have a civil union, that was struck down by the courts. Again, they may wish to have something else but that is not the case.

What I find profoundly disappointing is that we have tried very hard as a government to deal with a myriad of issues, from children to homelessness to students to education to major foreign policy challenges, and rather than the opposition finding the best within themselves and the best ideas that they have and offer those ideas to Canadians as something to put forward, they have churlishly decided to sink themselves into this debate in a highly venomous fashion without opposing it in a way that is rational and legal.

Instead of those members trying to oppose something that is essentially a faite accompli, I challenge those members to offer up better solutions than we have and we will offer up better ones than them because at the end of the day this is about the Canadian public. This is about those people who do not have homes, who cannot get health care, and it is about making companies more competitive.

We have a myriad of challenges. The G-8 summit is coming up. We have offered, as a government, a number of solutions, from forgiving the debt of highly indebted nations to providing more aid, in particular, for Africa and doubling it to 2009. We should deal with the issue of the undervalued Chinese yuan which has huge economic implications for the world and, in particular, for our country as a trading nation.

Those are the issues that matter to Canadians because it matters whether they have a job, it matters whether our exporting companies are competitive, it matters to the future of all Canadians, it matters to our tax base and it matters to our social programs. Those issues are important because it hits Canadians at a visceral level, at their dinner table, and those are issues that mean something to them.

We have offered up solutions for students and for our economy. We have balanced the budget for the eighth time eight years in a row. Do we hear any solutions from the other side? No, we do not. Have we heard a budget from the other side? No, we have not. Have we heard a rational set of solutions for the G-8 summit? No, we have not. We have not heard one solution for a major summit that is taking place, that has profound implications, not only for our country but for the international community and the world in which we live.

Do we hear solutions from them on how to mould the L-20? Do we hear solutions on how deadly conflict can be avoided that has claimed the lives of millions? Do we have any solutions on how the global fund for TB, AIDS and malaria can be improved? Do we hear any solutions on how our research and development can be improved, not only to address health care issues in Canada but also to address those internationally?

Do we hear any solutions to a major health care problem, the issue of mental illness in our country, or that depression will be the second leading cause of morbidity in our country in the future? Do we hear any innovative solutions to what we need to do for our aging population, to how we can incorporate our ever-increasing aging population, albeit healthier, into our workforce, to lower pressure on our social programs and our pension systems? Do we hear any innovative solutions to those things? No, we do not.

Do we hear any innovative workable solutions on defence? Do we hear any solutions on how we can increase our soldier? Do we hear any solutions on how we can improve the way in which our defence forces work?

We are trying. The Minister of Defence has put forth umpteen solutions to accomplish those objectives.

[Ken Epp, Conservative, Edmonton—Sherwood Park, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Since the Liberal side has invoked time allocation or closure on this debate, I think it is important for us to at least remain on the topic that we are debating, namely the issue of marriage. That individual has drifted far from that topic and I urge you to bring him back onto the topic.