Mr. Speaker, I am very disappointed to see this amendment come forward at this late date. In committee, only one person voted against the bill, so it was not a partisan manner, and we had a long discussion about the fact that there had been three sets of public hearings on the Hill on the bill, and those transcripts are available to all members.
On the question she specifically puts in the amendment, it seems passing strange to me that her amendment does not include removing religious freedom from protections against discrimination, or gender, or race, because the argument she is making could be made exactly in the same manner, that we cannot have those in the human rights code because people might not be able to believe things about race or might not be able to believe things about relations between men and women. Obviously, it has not had those impacts. It has not affected free speech of those groups. How is the question of transgender, gender-variant rights any different than the other rights that are already in the Canadian Human Rights Act and the protected section of the Criminal Code?