Mr. Speaker, as I indicated earlier, the Liberal Party is comfortable supporting certain values within the legislation before us. We recognize that there are particular issues that would deal with polygamy, forced marriage and the whole of idea of early marriage, with 16 being a national minimum that the government would set. It also deals with other issues in a small but important fashion, such as domestic violence.
The issue that we have taken up with the government, and for which I understand we will move an amendment on, is in regards to the short title. It is the short title that many people feel somewhat offended by, zero tolerance for barbaric cultural practices act. We would take nothing away from the legislation by deleting the word “cultural”, yet it is quite offensive for many people who share the same values that we all have inside this chamber towards the attitudes that the member has talked about.
Would the member not agree that dropping the word “cultural” from the short title would do nothing to minimize the effectiveness of the legislation that the government is putting forward and, in fact, would then make it that much better in terms of legislation?