Conservative Leader Stephen Harper launches his campaign Tuesday.

Harper would allow free vote on gay marriage

Updated Tue. Nov. 29 2005 6:19 PM ET

CTV.ca News Staff

Conservative Leader Stephen Harper says his party would allow a free vote on same-sex marriage if it forms the next government.

"It will be a genuine free vote when I'm prime minister. I will not whip our cabinet,'' he said Tuesday in Ottawa.

In last summer's vote on Bill C-38, Prime Minister Paul Martin required his ministers and parliamentary secretaries to support the government's legalization of gay weddings. That bill passed.

Under a Conservative government, MPs would be asked if Parliament wants to change the marriage definition. Harper said if MPs defeat the motion, he would consider the matter closed.

However, if they passed it, he would restore the traditional definition of marriage being between one man and one woman.

Harper said his government would allow existing same-sex marriages to continue.

About 3,000 same-sex marriages have been performed across Canada.

"That's the commitment we've made and it hasn't changed,'' Harper said in the lobby outside the House of Commons.

Harper raised the issue after his handlers had cut off further questions from reporters.

"I was asked about it, and it's not a secret that it's our commitment," he told CTV Newsnet's Mike Duffy on Monday afternoon.

"The people will have their say, and our commitment is to ask Parliament what its view will be."

The Conservatives have expressed a preference for extending civil union benefits to gay and lesbian couples.

"Mr. Harper begins his campaign with an unequivocal statement that, if elected prime minister, he would act swiftly to roll back charter rights," Scott Reid, a Martin spokesman, said soon after Harper's comments.

Reaction

"This is just the kind of thinking that drove me away from the Conservative Party," said Belinda Stronach, who left the Tories in May to become a Liberal cabinet minister.

"It's very divisive, it's divisive over individual rights, and for a fellow that wants to be prime minister of this country, I think it's a very cavalier way to go with respect to individual rights and minority rights," the first-term MP from Ontario's Newmarket-Aurora riding told CTV Newsnet's Countdown with Mike Duffy.

Asked if she saw it as a major issue, Stronach said: "Who is to say one individual is more equal than another individual? So to me, this is a very important issue."

Gay activists also say the matter was decided after a two-year debate.

"A decision was made, and I think a majority of Canadians -- whether or not they agree with the outcome -- agree that we should move on," Gilles Marchildon, executive director of EGALE Canada, told the Canadian Press.

However, former Liberal MP Pat O'Brien -- who broke with his party over the issue -- disagrees with that.

He is working with former Conservative MP Grant Hill to form Defend Marriage Canada.

O'Brien told CP that same-sex weddings are not over in the minds of "millions of Canadians.''

Most legal observers, however, say the only way a government could return to the traditional definition is by invoking the Charter of Rights and Freedoms' not-withstanding clause.

Several provincial appeal courts ruled the traditional definition violated the rights of same-sex couples to equality under the law. The Supreme Court of Canada issued a reference opinion on the issue.

"I don't know if it's just that (Harper) doesn't have anybody in his entourage ... who is capable of explaining this to him, or if it's just that he's ignoring all of these facts," University of Windsor political scientist Heather MacIvor told CP.

"We had this debate, and different experts have different views," Harper said.

Robert Fife, CTV's Parliamentary bureau chief, told Newsnet that the Liberals think Harper has made a serious tactical error.

"It's an issue that hurt the Conservatives in the last election campaign, this 'hidden Conservative agenda,'" he said.

At a Liberal campaign event in Ottawa Tuesday, all Martin would say is "Let me say unequivocally that I do not believe a prime minister should use the not-withstanding clause to strip away a Charter right."

With files from The Canadian Press

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