Mr. Speaker, because Bill C-38 is before the House and not the latest decision from the Supreme Court. I want to reiterate a couple of points.
On the issue of human rights, I know when this started. I suppose if I were to reflect back, the genesis of some of these things came when the Divorce Act was amended to provide no-fault divorce. All of a sudden we started to see the first pieces of the disrespect for the institution of marriage, the “I can get out of it”, and also the growth of common law relationships.
I remember watching a panel program on this. People were asked why they did not get married and why they were living common law. Ninety-nine per cent of the people said that it was easier to get out of, that there was no commitment.
At the time I wrote a monograph on strong families making a strong country. I tried to come up with a definition of true love or real love. It was something to the effect that true love was when we put the interests of others ahead of our own. Therefore marriage represents that commitment. It represents a true love. There is a weaker commitment in a common law relationship and between any two parties, I doubt that there is any commitment, which has nothing to add in terms of making Canada a stronger country.