It would be nice
to think that the remarkable outburst of democracy we've witnessed
this month in Ontario is here to stay. We'll see.
Over half of
Ontario's vast Liberal caucus may vote against their own leader's
homosexual marriage bill if it comes before Parliament--so many that
with help from Alliance and Tory MPs (except of course the honorable
member for Calgary Centre, Joe Clark), the bill could be killed.
Ontario hasn't
seen such an uproar since the free trade debate in 1988.
Whatever you may
think about gay rights, the question being decided is whether
Parliament or the judiciary will run the country.
Liberal Ontarians
opposed to the bill are berating their MPs on the street, at the car
wash and in restaurants. Priests and pastors are telling their
congregations to fight hard against it. (Believe it or not, never
until now have they actually said such things from the pulpit.) MPs'
phone lines, fax lines and e-mail boxes are jammed.
When the ruckus
began, all the usual liberal spin doctors said all the usual things.
For instance, Environics' Derek Leebosh dismissed opponents as
"right-wing cranks." They are the kind of uneducated,
under-employed 60-year-old males, he sneered, who phone open-line
radio shows. In poll after poll, Leebosh insisted, a "modest but
solid majority" of citizens supports gay marriage.
Solid majority my
foot. When pollsters phone people at home during supper or hockey
games, public support for "same-sex" marriages does
register slightly above 50-50. But if they are asked more bluntly if
they support "homosexual" marriages, response is about 70%
hostile. If Leebosh doesn't know this, he's incompetent. And if he
does, he's a propagandist.
But suppose the
Liberal back bench does defeat this bill. Even then, gay marriage
will continue to be imposed by the courts.
In B.C. and
Ontario, provincial governments are already issuing marriage licences
under court order.
There is only one
way for parliamentarians to stop the homosexual marriage steamroller,
if indeed they really want to. They can pass a bill exempting the
federal Marriage Act from judicial interference under the Charter of
Rights. It means invoking section 33 of the Charter by an act of
Parliament, and repeating the process every five years.
Only that will
stop gay marriage. Anything less amounts to posturing.
And that act alone
will decide whether Canadian laws will be written by elected
representatives or by the nine lawyers appointed to the bench of the
Supreme Court.
Law-making is by
definition a political exercise. It always was and ever will be. The
question is which politicians will engage in it, the electees or the appointees?
There is among the
Liberal bench a peculiar dogma that when it comes to the Charter,
judges must always have the final say. "Parliament mustn't opt
out of the Charter of Rights," they gravely intone.
"Minority rights can't be subjected to majority prejudice."
Who are they
trying to kid? Minority rights have ALWAYS been subject to majority
definition. More to the point, section 33 is IN the Charter of
Rights. To say it's unconstitutional to use the constitution is like
saying it would be criminal to invoke the Criminal Code.
The real
democratic test of the Liberal caucus will not be whether they oppose
their leader in a free vote. It will be whether they invoke the
opting-out provision of the Canadian constitution.
It would be
strategically sound at this point for the Alliance Party to introduce
a motion this fall calling for Parliament to invoke section 33 on gay
marriage, on the grounds that courts have misunderstood the Charter.
Then see what the Liberals do.
Once the question
has been removed from the courts, Parliament should probably seek
guidance by means of a national referendum. For it is the Canadian
people to whom the constitution ultimately belongs, and they who
should decide what it means.
- Link Byfield
Link Byfield is
chairman of the Edmonton-based Citizens Centre for Freedom and Democracy.
"Just
Between Us" is a feature service of the Citizens Centre for
Freedom and Democracy. The purpose of the Citizens Centre is to
improve the quality of life for all Canadians by promoting policies
that foster individual initiative and personal responsibility.
