Madam Speaker, it is with a great deal of sadness and disappointment that I rise today on behalf of my colleagues in the New Democratic Party caucus to debate this Reform motion which can only be described as a thinly veiled attempt to promote and endorse discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
If the motion were truly an attempt to open parliamentary debate and discussions on making our judicial and court system more responsive, more effective and more democratic, we would have before us today a motion dealing with those very issues, a motion that would have talked about the question of the length of appointments of judges to the bench. It would have talked about balance in terms of gender, people of colour and aboriginal people on the bench. It would have talked about proper training and education for judges to make better decisions. However, the motion does not touch on any of those issues. It does not address the question of democratization of the supreme court or our judicial system.
We are dealing today with a motion which seeks to end the ability of judges to apply the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. We would have a charter but the rights and freedoms of Canadians would not be protected by it. Those rights include as we all know freedom of speech; freedom of association; and the right to equality without discrimination on the basis of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or disability. These rights and freedoms are very dear to Canadians. They will not give them up. They will not give them away easily because the Reform Party tells them to do so.
In the Rosenberg case the court found that lesbians and gay men contributed equally to pension plans and should be equally entitled to the benefits. Before the ruling the federal government penalized employers that provided the same pension benefits to gay and lesbian employees as they did to all their other employees. The federal government would deregister the pension plan for tax purposes and make it unviable. The federal government was in essence forcing employers to discriminate against certain employees and deprive them of benefits the employees were paying for.
In the Rosenberg case there was an employer, the Canadian Union of Public Employees which wanted to offer equal pension benefits to all its employees and was prohibited by the federal government from doing so. As a result of Rosenberg, the spouses of people who pay into employer pension plans will now be able to benefit equally from the pension plan regardless of sex.
The Rosenberg decision is supported by a wide variety of Canadians, by many equality seeking groups. I include in that list the Chinese Canadian National Council, the Disabled Women's Network and anti-poverty groups.
The New Democratic Party applauds the Rosenberg decision and would not want to see the clock turned back to the 19th century as the Reform Party would have it. We are almost in the next millennium and the Reform Party still has not caught up with this one. Unfortunately neither have the Liberals. The Liberals wait for the courts to make these decisions because they do not have the courage to do the right thing. They do not want to be associated with lesbian and gay equality rights.
The Liberal government through its inaction on equality rights has given the Reform Party a platform today to pursue its anti-gay and anti-lesbian policies. If the Liberal government would stop penalizing employers that want to treat all their employers equally, we would not be having this discussion today.
The New Democratic Party of British Columbia has recognized same sex partnerships. It has recognized that the lack of recognition of same sex partnerships has contributed to child poverty as same sex partners were not liable for child support. Lesbians, gay men and bisexuals are not only asking for the same rights as heterosexuals but for the same responsibilities too. The Nova Scotia government just ruled on this issue and extended pension benefits to surviving partners of same sex relationships.
Today's motion shows the Reform Party's true colours. It is not a pretty picture. The leader of the Reform Party was quoted in the Vancouver Sun as saying “homosexuality is destructive to the individual and in the long run to society”. Another member said that he would fire a lesbian or a gay man or send them to the back of the shop. One of his colleagues chimed in that employment discrimination against gays and lesbians is in the best interest of society. The deputy justice critic for the Reform Party said that gay bashing was not a human rights issue.
The Liberals have also had their fair share of anti-equality MPs, Roseanne Skoke to name one. She said: “Homosexuality is the scourge of mankind”. The leader of the Conservative Party was quoted in 1994 as saying that protecting gay men and lesbians from discrimination is too costly for taxpayers.
In the early 1990s my colleague, the NDP member for Burnaby, moved an amendment that would have allowed same sex benefits for members of parliament. At the time the Mulroney Tories axed it. Today the Reform Party is following in the Mulroney tradition. Let us make no mistake. The Reform Party did not choose the Rosenberg decision by accident for this ill advised motion. The Reform Party is asking the government in this motion to appeal the Rosenberg decision. I call on the government to stop taking the lead from the Reform Party in these matters and to end this unfair and unequal treatment of employees now.
The Reform Party likes to stick its nose into people's bedrooms and kitchens and tell them whom they can sleep with, whom they can fall in love with and whom they may choose as a life partner. The Reform Party wants to decide who is a family and who is not a family. It wants to dictate that one widow who was with her partner for 20 years can receive a survivor's pension because her partner was male while another widow who was with her partner for 20 years cannot because her partner was female.
Lesbians and gay men pay the same taxes and they pay into the same benefit schemes as everyone else. Yet, if it were up to the Reform Party, they would pay into those schemes but their families would never benefit from them. That is discrimination. That is just plain wrong.
Canadians are watching this debate with great interest today. They will be hearing the silly comments and twisted rationalizations of the Reform Party trying to put a respectable veneer on plain and simple bigotry. The New Democratic Party wholeheartedly opposes the motion and everything it represents.
New Democrats believe the government and the Reform Party have no business deciding whom one can love, dictating who is a family and telling employers to discriminate against their employees.
