A rchive Date
[ 22-06-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/waugh_jun22.html
Gays will wed here
By NEIL WAUGH -- Edmonton Sun
June 22, 2003
Break out the seafoam bridesmen's tuxedos and book the Legion hall. Adam and Steve are getting married in the morning. Not this morning, necessarily. But there will be a officially sanctioned, Ralph Klein government-blessed, same-sex marriage right here in Alberta before Christmas.
The feds won't challenge a court's decision ordering the Ontario government to begin registering Adam and Steve unions immediately because not to do so would be unconstitutional. Instead the Grits - presumably as part of the ongoing search for the Jean Chretien's elusive political legacy - will construct their own homosexual marriage law.
It will then be submitted to the Supreme Court of Canada to see if it's constitutionally airtight before it goes to a free vote of the House of Commons.
Strange, when I was covering the nation-building constitutional debates back in the 1980s, then-premier Peter Lougheed never mentioned a word that the whole mess would lead to same-sex marriages 20 years later.
But when you list a bunch of vague and ill-defined rights and freedoms and then turn judges loose on them, it's amazing what they can find written between the lines.
Canada's descent into an unelected "judgeocracy" has gathered steam in recent years, to the point where it's worth asking if taxpayers should still be required to foot the bill for superfluous and increasingly powerless provincial legislatures, which have become little more than silly debating societies that must vet their legislation before a panel of Ottawa-appointed judges before it can become law.
A few years back, anticipating Ottawa's impending assault on the sanctity of marriage, Red Deer Tory MLA Vic Doerksen, sponsored a private member's bill defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman.
It instructed the government to invoke the Constitution's notwithstanding clause to defend the definition against the judges and the Liberals. It passed overwhelmingly and is now the law of the province.
One of the few MLAs to vote against it was the Alberta government's leading Red Tory, Dave Hancock. Now Hancock and his struggling Justice Department are the last line of defence in preserving what he calls the "historic, cultural and social significance" of marriage. Already we're in deep trouble.
And that was before Hancock began whittling away at what the notwithstanding clause actually means. "We don't have the option to use the notwithstanding clause with respect to federal legislation," Hancock sniffed.
So much for Peter Lougheed's impenetrable constitutional firewall. "We can't use it as a hammer against federal legislation."
So the whole issue comes down to whether filing marriage registry papers is a provincial or federal responsibility. Hancock is already admitting "that has never been totally clear."
But the cynical prime minister, as usual, appears to be well ahead of Hancock and his Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight bureaucrats. He let it slip on Tuesday that part of his reference to the Supreme Court will also determine whether the notwithstanding hammer can be used at all by Alberta.
The answer, you can be 100% guaranteed, is no. "We've said we will uphold it to the best of our abilities," Hancock sputtered.
But anyone who has watched the Klein government at work over the years knows that they're always full of bluster and rhetoric going into any fight with the feds. But like Kyoto, the gun registry, jailing Wheat Board protesters, health care, Senate reform and a long list of other grievances, at the end of the day they roll over like a fat hog in a ditch.
And Ottawa wins again.
Ironically, Hancock's own gay liberation legislation, the Adult Interdependent Relationships Act, which is in reality a same-sex divorce act, is about to kick in.
Chretien figured out the Alberta Tories. He lets the premier have his little rant, Hancock launches his no-hope lawsuits simply to save face and that's it. That's why there will be an Alberta-sanctioned gay marriage in the province before the end of the year. And all the posturing and phony legal action is a sad charade.
Because Adam and Steve are going to the chapel. And they are gonna get married. Whether Martha and Henry like it or not.
Neil Waugh can be reached by e-mail at neil.waugh@edm.sunpub.com Letters to the editor should be sent to letters@edm.sunpub.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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