Madam Speaker, Bill C-23 has raised a lot of questions and a lot of issues. People want to get their views on the record. Through the course of the debate we have found people with different backgrounds appearing to take a common position on a bill for entirely different reasons.
For example, just a few moments ago an hon. colleague from the Conservative Party reaffirmed for everybody in the House who was listening that this bill was purely and exclusively about economic and fiscal inequalities that must be redressed. As many others have done, he pointed to the fact that legislation in the House was really behind the current conditions of the day in the marketplace. As an example, he pointed to the many decisions on the part of the private sector to equalize benefits notwithstanding sexual orientation.
That may be true but the bill does aim to ensure that the economic discrepancies and inequalities that appear to exist in relationships of economic dependency are immediately redressed. I underscore that this has been an issue of economic dependency. I think the state has a right to intervene in any partnership where economic dependency does have ramifications for the larger social good.
As was rightly pointed out by individuals in the House, tolerance, compassion and all those values that they ascribe to Canadian society and to each and every individual here, do come into play. However, as another colleague has accurately pointed out, one does not legislate compassion, equality or justice. One legislates equality of treatment.
When there is, as this bill has indicated, a circumstance where economic dependency and a partnership is not recognized, then the state has the obligation to ensure that both the rights and the responsibilities of that partnership are upheld. The presumption, of course, is that these partnerships all have the social value for a collective good.
Bill C-23 recognizes that there is a discrimination of sorts. I say of sorts because I am trying to be very careful and cautious in the language I use. This is, after all, a charged environment. I am looking at the issue of all economic dependencies. Cases where these economic dependencies do not call into question a sexual relationship are excluded from this bill. For me that is an important and significant vacuum in this legislation. We should include all those who are not properly dealt with by legislation.
As members of parliament, once we see an injustice, once we perceive an inequality and once we engage our energies to ensure that we address that inequality, we have an obligation to not restrict that energy to just one component of that inequality.
I do not know if I am making myself clear, but if one recognizes the value of economic dependencies, then surely one should not restrict them on the basis of sexuality.
I am sure my children think of me as a prude, or a dinosaur, as a member on the other side would have said. I am not really. I am one of those children of the sixties. I recognize that there are responsibilities that we arrogate to ourselves the moment we make decisions. I truly believe that as individuals, if we make a decision we are responsible for it. We cannot ask somebody else to be responsible for our decisions unless of course those decisions have a larger impact. If people are willing to show me what the benefits are of some individual decisions, I am willing to accept them.
Colleagues on both sides of the House have argued that the bill should be exclusively fiscal and economic in its approach, and that what the Government of Canada rightly is doing is catching up to society and giving to many relationships the legitimacy that convention has already accorded them and that private sectors have already ascribed by virtue of some decisions that have emanated from the courts.
However, there is one other element that people have raised. My colleague from the Conservative Party a few moments ago said that some people were still struggling with homosexuality. No, I do not think anybody is. There are overtones of religious bias. There is bias in everything.
Despite being one of those people from the free wheeling sixties, I too had an upbringing. I am proud to say that my upbringing was religious, although I am not as practising as I used to be, but it was religious in the sense that it said every single man and woman, every single creature on this earth is worthy of the dignity that is accorded all humans.
If people would say to me that I was being a little bit religious on this issue, I would say that they are darned right. I hope I am living up to the credo that I espoused when I was a younger man. What dignity is at stake? What compassion need I accord to someone that my background has not already obligated me to offer? What discrimination is so glaring that it needs my immediate and total attention? I would willingly give it.
People have pointed out the economic and fiscal discrepancies where two unrelated people, it does not matter what gender they are, have agreed in their partnership that they would sustain each other. We as a state or as representatives of the state say that is a good and healthy relationship and we will give it what it is due. However, let us do that for every single relationship. Let us not restrict it by sexuality. If we do, we then call into question precisely the issues that some of my colleagues have raised, and that is, by so restricting this decision and by indicating that we can only deal with this element of inequality do we then not call into question the larger issues, the issue of matrimony, the issue of heterosexual relationships, the issue, as my colleague from the Alliance Party indicated, of family? From there we can extrapolate all the ills that we will.
I do not think we are in a position where we need to challenge ourselves about sustaining something that is rock solid. Like many members in the House, I am also blessed with a little bit of skepticism. I thought this was a bill, purely and exclusively, about redressing fiscal and economic inequalities and economic dependencies. However, I then heard other members in the House, as is the end or objective of debate, and advocates outside the House complain that the Minister of Justice changed the bill by including an amendment wherein she defined marriage. Their response was that the bill was not about economic dependency. They said that the bill was about recognizing this particular sexual activity on the same par as another.
My tolerance and my willingness to address the issue were awakened. My constituents were also equally compassionate and equally committed to establishing a country and a society of which everyone could be proud. They are now asking which it is. Is the bill one that recognizes this type of marriage on the same basis as the other by giving a definition or not giving a definition or by giving the same benefits that accrue to this one? What are the social benefits of any type of union?
If it is true that the state has no business in the bedroom of the nation, what then should be the criteria for economic dependency? What should be the test of unions that are for the common weal and not for individual benefit?
