Mr. Speaker, I am happy to speak on the bill. Since the parliamentary secretary has just referred to the word “cultural”, maybe that is a good place to begin. We in the Liberal Party proposed an amendment to remove the word “cultural” from the title, which would then read: zero tolerance for barbaric practices act. We thought it was totally unnecessary and offensive to some to include the word “cultural”. Whatever the government's intent might be, certain communities viewed themselves as being targeted by the use of this word. The word does nothing to enhance the content of the legislation, it is not necessary in any way, yet it is offensive to some. Therefore, I see absolutely nothing to gain, but something to lose, by keeping the word “cultural” in the title of the bill.

The government, through some convoluted argument, which I have heard several times and never understood because I do not think it makes sense, did not agree to that. Therefore, the word “cultural” remains. However, that is not sufficient enough for the Liberal Party to vote against the bill, because we mainly go by the content of a bill rather than by the sometimes ridiculous Conservative title.

In terms of the content, we have reservations in some areas, which I will allude to in a minute or two. However, overall, we think there is enough that is positive in the bill that we will support it.

I will go through the four elements in the bill, which are the provisions on honour killing, and related to that, the defence of provocation; polygamy; the age of marriage; and forced marriage. I think it is pretty well self-evident, and I cannot speak for other parties, but speaking for the Liberal Party, we regard all of these practices as undesirable things that ought to be totally illegal. Therefore, if the bill in some respects can define them better or make them more illegal, then we would be in favour.

Particularly, the two substantive items in the bill that we do like are: one, for the first time we have a minimum age of marriage at 16; and second, the innovation in the bill that it would be a crime to participate in a forced marriage. We think those are both advanced and we support those two items.

In terms of reservations, we think that the defence of provocation in the context of honour killing is really just a political show, because the lawyers who testified before us made it very clear that the defence of provocation would never be accepted by any court in this country in the case of an honour killing. Therefore, it is redundant and I think something the Conservatives brought in for political effect.

I also think that the Conservatives' definition of what would constitute acceptable provocation is inappropriate. The crimes they listed included fairly minor things, such as theft, and we think the crimes should be more major. The minister seemed to agree with that, but he did not understand that the bill did include minor crimes. That is one thing in the bill that we would like to see changed, but it is not enough to cause us to vote against it.

On polygamy, there was some discussion as to whether there should be a definition of polygamy, because if someone is not allowed into the country because of polygamy or deported because of polygamy, it might be a good idea to have a definition as to what it is. One can see the scope for abuse of people's rights if the offence for which they might be charged is not properly defined.

On the age of marriage, according to the bill, if a person is 16 or 17 years old, marriage would be allowed with parental consent, and parental consent alone would be sufficient. However, we thought that if we are into a world of potential forced marriages, then parental consent might not be sufficient. If it is a forced marriage, then the consent of the parent would be a part of that forced marriage scenario, which we want to stop.

For this reason, we propose that there be some judicial mechanism, which I believe exists in some provinces, in addition to parental consent in the case of the marriages of 16- and 17-year-olds.

In essence, what I am saying is that there is enough that we like in this bill to make us think it is worth supporting overall, but there are various things that we would add to the very long list of other things that the Conservatives have done with which we disagree. Should we become the government at some point, I suppose we would add these items to the already long list of things done by the Conservative government that we would want to undo. The list is a very long one.

Just in the immigration area, for example, approximately 99% of the content of the Citizenship Act constitutes additional hurdles and barriers that we would want to remove. However, in the case of this particular bill, we think that there is enough merit in it that we in the Liberal Party will vote in support of it.

John McCallum

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