Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate my colleague on a fine speech. I agree with him that the courts have been particularly aggressive on this issue.
I asked the member for Scarborough—Rouge River a question about the government's failure in this regard. I wonder if the member would comment on that. Briefly, my question was that when charter equity challenges were heard in the lower court, the court only had the option of rejecting the claim or offering marriage. However, when the Supreme Court was expressly asked in question four in the same sex marriage reference, is the opposite sex requirement for marriage for civil purposes consistent with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, it declined to answer the question. This was in essence because if it had voted yes to that, it would have thrown the whole state of law into confusion.
In my view the federal government dropped the ball here. It should have aggressively defended the traditional definition of marriage and it did not. I wonder if my friend would comment on that.