Mr. Speaker, I have been paying attention to today's debate. Obviously emotions have been high when it comes to this issue and the way people see marriage and families and the future of those definitions. There is obviously much to be said about it.
It also saddens me a bit to speak to this bill. I have seen it is a constant trend with the government that it does not seem to produce bills that actually bring consensus, that bring people together or try to find solutions to hard problems. Instead it introduces bills and types of legislation that pull the country apart at different levels as we can imagine.
I find it very saddening being a young person in the House who looks to legislation that hopefully will try to bring people together and find consensus. Unfortunately, the government does not really believe in that. It only believes in trying to promote its own agenda, its own political groups and the power surrounding that. That gives me a little bit of sadness in talking about this bill.
I expressed those sentiments because I saw how passionately some of my colleagues spoke about the definition of marriage and how that should be upheld in the law. When I reflect on the type of letters I have received in my constituency office and my Ottawa office, there has definitely been overwhelming support on strengthening the definition of marriage and keeping it between a man and a woman.
There are some people who feel, especially when we look at this bill which is called the modernization of benefits and obligations act, that the government has not approached the idea of modernizing benefits in an inclusive way. Again it has done it in a way that keeps it strictly based on conjugal relationships. If the government were serious about modernizing its benefits act, maybe it would have looked at some other options of trying to deal with other relationships that are based on dependency rather than strictly on sex. A few people have talked about this.
I am not afraid to say that I have friends in different communities, whether they are heterosexual or homosexual or same sex relationships. There is even no agreement in those communities. I think about the same sex friends who are in same sex relationships. Many of them do not want to change the definition of marriage. They believe it is an institution that has been created in history and is something that needs to be continued as being a relationship between a man and a woman. They want to try to strengthen that. There are people in the community who feel that way. Obviously there are others who do not agree with that. But many of my friends have told me that.
What they would like to see and what they were hoping to see in the leadership from the government was that if it were serious about modernizing benefits then maybe it would move away from the requirement of conjugal relationships. I will give an example.
Since this bill has come into play, my grandfather of all people, who follows politics quite closely and more so since I was elected, gave me a call. He said that he would like to know a bit more about the bill, especially because of the relationship between he and his daughter. She has been taking care of him over the past number of years since my grandmother passed away. He was enquiring about benefits in that relationship. He has been paying in for years and years and he wanted to know whether he could transfer those benefits to his daughter when he passed away. Unfortunately, given the way the benefits are outlined in current legislation, those types of sharing and dependent relationships are not allowed to look at that option.
When we look at this bill as modernizing benefits and obligations, how has the government attempted to be more inclusive of different relationships, if that is what it is trying to do? Or if it really cares, how has it tried to be more inclusive in bringing people together rather than causing this rift and pulling people apart as we see in this debate?
It upsets me to some extent to see how the government has refused to look at any other options on that level. I think that the concern for many of our colleagues, which has been explained during the course of this debate, is how caring is the government.
As was mentioned by a few of our colleagues, the concern with this bill which is an omnibus bill, is what effects changing the definition of marriage will have on a number of other statutes. My colleague who spoke prior to me and many of my other colleagues have said that they would like to see the same definition of marriage in the bill put at the end of the bill as well to make sure that the definition does not compromise or negatively affect that definition of marriage. The government has said that it is committed to that but we have not seen any real effort to give those people who are committed to that definition the sense of comfort that it will be committed to that through the whole process.
As we approach the next round of the debate and as we approached the bill going to committee, especially with the type of evidence the official opposition has raised in the debate concerning the effects of the various legal opinions particularly on marriage and even benefits, hopefully the government will approach the debate, as I have identified, in a more inclusive rather than a restrictive manner strictly based on conjugal relationships. Many of our members would like to see how the government will deal with that issue and if the government is just providing lip service or if in fact it does care about Canadians.
For people who pay into a system of benefits, those benefits should be available to them when they are ready to claim them or passed on to the right people. Concerning the view of equality, as the official opposition we constantly do talk about the idea of equality of all Canadians, all citizens and all provinces. It is something we fundamentally believe to our core. Unfortunately, even though the government claims to believe in those things, in the end we do not see that extended to many other levels especially, as I have mentioned a little today, to the idea of dependent relationships.
A number of colleagues have been trying to advance the debate to see whether there is any angle that can be pursued with this bill to make us somewhat unified as we approach the modernization of benefits. I do not know whether we will see the government take part in that part of the debate fairly.
Some of my colleagues spoke about how it should be cherished and how we should as a group of members of parliament, continue to support the family as much as we can. We should continue to make policies in this place that support families and Canadians and which strengthen them. That is really the way a country can remain strong. My colleague before me mentioned that.
The official opposition has put forward a number of solutions which we hoped the government would consider in its decision making and obviously it has not. They are ideas like a fairer tax system not only for all Canadians but for families and the idea of looking at ways to deal with justice issues so that we can make families more protected and stronger. It seems to me the government refuses to look at these sorts of options especially when it comes to tax fairness for families. When we look at the issue of modernizing benefits, the government is very narrow in its focus and does not really look at ways to help Canadians on a broad based level. That is very disheartening for this side of the House.
