MP Vic Toews was interviewed on NewsTalk 570 this afternoon and while I was hoping to here the answer to how civil unions stops polygamy the issue unfortunately did not come up. Here is the first part of the interview.
Host: This is a conversation I’ve had a number of times with friends and then I see the headline in today’s National Post and I think, oh dear here we go, polygamy the next debate is the headline in the National Post as Ottawa launches an urgent study on – as same-sex marriage opens the door to Charter challenges claiming plural marriages are religious rights. Vic Toews is the Conservative critic in this particular area and he joins us on the phone line now from Vancouver and Vic, is this a real concern or is this just Chicken Little, the sky is falling journalism?
Vic Toews: No, no. I think it is a real concern. I think that the Martin government understands that it has a problem on its hands with this issue. Unfortunately the Martin government has not been honest with the Canadian people as to the ramifications of the SSM debate. I’m saying this not as a politician but also as a constitutional lawyer. I’ve done many constitutional cases – this clearly is the next frontier, so to speak. And what the Status of Women is now trying to do is develop evidence for a constitutional case to show that polygamy is not consistent with the Charter while still maintaining that SSM is consistent with the Charter. So the fine line that the government is trying to walk here – to defend it’s SSM agenda and at the same time close the door to polygamy.
H: This is a huge Pandora’s box because if the polygamists start challenging this then what’s after that?
VT: Well, I think we don’t know what the ramifications are, generally or specifically, of SSM. Polygamy is a clear next step. Once you open the definition of marriage to two persons, what then is the substantive difference between two persons and three and four and more? From a logical point of view there’s nothing different and so what they then have to do is develop evidence that shows it’s inconsistent with Canadian Values and I would think that the Status of Women organization would be particularly concerned with the exploitation of women in the context of polygamy. We’ve heard, of course, from the news media about the Bountiful experience in British Columbia with polygamy but I don’t this is a slam dunk in terms of the court declaring that polygamy is not acceptable.
H: Well, I know bigamy is illegal, what’s the difference between a bigamist and a polygamist? Is it just mathematics?
VT: Well, usually with bigamists the other spouse doesn’t know that the person is already married and so polygamy is usually the consensual married of more than two people, bigamy is usually an individual not telling his first spouse or her first spouse that she’s already married. But in fact the law treats polygamists as bigamists here in Canada.
H: And it’s illegal.
VT: It is illegal. But just because it’s illegal doesn’t mean that that’s a barrier, because if that law, making it illegal, is inconsistent with the Charter according to some judge then they can strike that law aside and then open the door to polygamist unions. So this is not a pipedream and unfortunately the Martin government has been consistent is denying that it would ever lead to polygamy and yet in the back rooms, so to speak, they are preparing a case for an eventual challenge by a polygamist. In fact we heard in some of the news media today that a Muslim group saying that if the government accepts SSM that they expect challenges from polygamy. They are certain groups of Muslims of course who allow pluralist marriages and do so from a very staunch religious view and we will have this battle between the values of religion and then also the equality rights. So
we’ll see these battling issues in Canada’s Courts in the very near future.
