Mr. Speaker, this debate has engendered intense emotions, not only in the House but throughout the country.
I believe there has been a great deal of misunderstanding about what this bill will do. To me it is very simple. In the recent supreme court case of M. v H., the highest court in this land ruled that under Canada's constitution common law same sex couples must be given the same equal treatment as common law opposite sex couples. This is a question of equality. This is a question of fairness. Since that decision came down a number of other actions have begun.
I do not often have a great deal of good to say about our Conservative colleagues in Ontario, but the Government of Ontario—which is not a wild and woolly, let us be inventive, let us do things differently for the sake of being different government—acted very quickly, as all governments have an obligation to do, to respect the laws of Canada. It brought in a bill recognizing what the supreme court had brought down. It introduced equal rights for common law same sex couples. Within five days of that bill being brought forward it was passed into law, without even a vote, with agreement from all three parties.
The course in this legislature has not been as expeditious. Nevertheless, we have brought in this law and it will be passed.
My office and those of many other members here have received calls expressing the concern that this bill deals with a new definition of marriage. It does not. It has never been about marriage. That has been made abundantly clear. It is only about the rights and obligations of certain people who are living together.
To make it even more clear that this bill is not about marriage an amendment was made. There were many in the House who felt the amendment was not necessary. It states:
For greater certainty, the amendments made by this Act do not affect the meaning of the word “marriage”, that is, the lawful union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others.
It is a bogeyman to say that this bill changes the definition or the concept of marriage, if that was a major concern in life.
Another issue brought out in this debate by many thoughtful members of parliament is that it should not just deal with same sex relationships where there is a dependency, it should deal with all relationships involving a dependency. I have to commend members, such as the member for Scarborough East, who have brought this forward as an alternative to the relationships we are talking about here.
It makes a lot of sense, where there are relationships of dependency, that these rights and obligations should go forward and be respected through the law. After all, we are a caring society and one of our objectives is to ensure that individuals assume a role of responsibility in looking after those with whom they have a relationship. This could be a relationship of children and parents or brothers and sisters. It could be friends, of any sex.
There are problems, however, because we are not only dealing with rights when it will be to someone's benefit to be able to achieve, say, the pension benefits or the health and dental benefits of another person.
The obligation to look after certain people has been recognized in law. We have recently seen how parents have been able to sue children for support. Because a legal relationship, respected in law and based on dependency, is not always a one-way street, we have had to rethink this particular issue. I will give an example using old age security.
If we have two seniors living together, when they are married then their joint income is used as the basis for determining old age security benefits. If they are not married, but in a relationship of dependency, using the joint income approach could lead to a diminution in the old age security going to one individual.
Another example is where an adult lives with an elderly parent and then leaves, for example, to be married. The Canada pension plan credits would have to be allocated to the elderly parent the same as if there were a divorce of a married couple.
These are a couple of examples where the issue of creating these obligations based on dependency, a relationship of dependency between two individuals or two or more individuals, has difficulties attached to it because it is not a one-way street. It is not just benefits flowing.
This is why the Law Commission of Canada has been looking at the issue, because it does deserve further study. That is the reason I am pleased the minister has announced that this issue of benefits and obligations being extended by virtue of Bill C-23 will not be the end of the road, that a parliamentary subcommittee will be appointed to look at the particular issue of where these benefits and obligations should lie in other relationships based on dependency. I think that is the way to go.
Meanwhile, we have the clear dictate of the Supreme Court of Canada that, based on equality and fairness, these rights should be extended and must be extended by our legislature.
This is a question of fairness. It is a question of equality. It is a question of what is right.
