Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to this bill. The Liberal Party will be voting in favour of it. We have some problems with it, which I will describe, but on balance, we believe that the positive features of the bill are more important than the negative ones and that is why we will support it.

Our biggest problem is with the short title, “zero tolerance for barbaric cultural practices act”. We moved an amendment to remove the word “cultural” and the government refused. The contents of the bill are not affected by the title, so this is not sufficient for us to vote against the contents, but we are strongly of the view that the word “cultural” is inappropriate.

Part of the reason is that if we look at the commission of such acts of polygamy, forced marriage, things that we all oppose, these are not limited to a single culture. There is the Christian group out in British Columbia in the news, the Jewish group in Quebec, and Muslim groups as well. It is all over the map. It is also of different cultures. When one inserts the word “cultural” into the bill, it creates unnecessary offence felt by certain communities.

The essence of our argument is that the use of the word “cultural” does not do anything at all to affect the content of the bill. It is not really doing anything good, but it is certainly doing something bad as it is causing unnecessary offence to communities that, rightly or wrongly, feel that the government is singling them out. For that reason, there is something to be gained and nothing to be lost by removing that word.

I have heard the minister on more than one occasion give some convoluted defence of the idea of why “cultural” should be in there. I have never understood his argument and I still do not. My argument is a very simple one. If the word does not do any good, but it does harm in offending communities, then it should be removed.

It is particularly the Muslim community that has taken offence to this. People in the Muslim community feel that they are being targeted. I think it is fair to say as a serious understatement that the government has not exactly reached out to the Muslim community in a positive way, so it is perhaps not surprising that they feel offended.

I remember that within days of 9/11, then prime minister Jean Chrétien went to a mosque to underline his support and the government's support for the Muslim community. Again, to put it very mildly, the leaders of the Conservative government have done nothing remotely resembling that, and instead, they include this word which is offensive to a major Canadian community. The fact that they are unwilling to remove that word simply adds to a long list of things that they have already done which have proved offensive to that particular community.

For all of those reasons, we are strongly opposed to the inclusion of the word “cultural”, but we do think the contents of the bill are such as to deserve support notwithstanding its bad short title. I will mention briefly what the positive features are.

First, the law now prescribes a minimum age for marriage. We think it is positive and good to have a minimum age for marriage across the country. That is a significant contribution of this bill, which goes beyond the distastefulness of the title. That is the first reason we support the bill.

The second thing that we like about this bill is that it would criminalize participation in forced marriages. I think everyone in the chamber is opposed to forced marriages, so it is good that we would make it a criminal offence to participate in such a marriage. That is another thing that the bill would do which we in the Liberal Party support.

It has been argued by the NDP and others that there should be an exemption for young people in this provision of criminalizing participation in forced marriages. My answer to that is that our justice system is flexible. Prosecutors have a lot of flexibility in whether they prosecute somebody or they do not.

There are some cases where, for example, if a 17-year-old brother has participated actively in the forced marriage of his younger sister, it might be appropriate for that person to be charged. Whereas in many cases, the individual young people will be innocent bystanders, not knowing what is going on or for whatever reason do not deserve to be prosecuted.

Our system is flexible enough. The prosecutors have been around for a while. They would not want to go after people in a way that was inappropriate. Preserving some flexibility in the administration of justice may be a positive thing to do.

We will therefore vote in favour of this bill because we agree with some of its measures, such as establishing a minimum age of marriage and criminalizing participation in a forced marriage. For those reasons, despite the bill's title, which we do not like, we will support this bill.

There are a couple of other areas where we are less than totally satisfied with the bill. One of those is the provisions regarding inadmissibility for those practising polygamy. It might be helpful if we had a definition of what polygamy is, because I know there are different definitions. When one gives immigration officers substantial power to bar someone from entering Canada, or even conceivably to expel somebody from Canada, it is a good idea to have a precise definition of the action for which that person will be barred or expelled.

I understand this is an issue of some debate in the legal community. I do not think there is a general consensus on what the definition ought to be. Therefore, it is a problem.

I would think that if we are to give immigration officers significant powers to remove people or bar people from entering our country, it would be a good idea to define more clearly what the offence is for which they can take these actions.

Finally, there was some confusion on the definition of the defence of provocation. I seem to recall the minister did not really know what it was in committee and had to be corrected by his officials. There is room for improvement in that area.

I do have objections to the bill and positive points about the bill, but primarily for the two reasons I gave, the definition of age of marriage and the criminalization of participation in forced marriages, the Liberal Party will vote in favour of the bill.

John McCallum