In Ontario, in fact, the judge who wrote the decision striking down the law that limited the issuance of marriage licences to opposite-sex couples was formerly the Attorney General in a Conservative government of the province. ;)
Back in 1982, when he was AG, he was a major player in the creation and adoption of the new Canadian Constitution and specifically the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in it. (And in a recent newspaper article, both he and his NDP -- social democrat -- counterpart from Saskatchewan, who had been wary of "judicial activism", supported the "liberal" way that the Supreme Court has interpreted and applied the Charter to date.)
http://www.samesexmarriage.ca/legal/on.htmlIn British Columbia, where the limitation on marriage licence issuance was also struck down last year, the province has actually directed its marriage commissioners (the equivalent of "JPs", the agents of the government who perform non-religious marriages) that if they will not perform same-sex marriages, they are required to resign their commissions.
http://www.samesexmarriage.ca/legal/bc.html(In Canada, "marriage", i.e. limits on who may marry, is under federal jurisdiction, while "the solemnization of marriage", i.e. the formalities like licences, is under provincial jurisdiction.)
In Quebec, the issue has just come before the Court of Appeal, to which it was appealed by religious groups who were given standing in the case, and no decision will be available for a while yet; the same-sex couples won in the lower courts. Quebec does have "civil unions".
On June 7, 2002, L'assemble Nationale du Quebec passed their civil union bill (Bill 84) unanimously. The bill, the most far reaching piece of registered domestic partnership legislation in Canada, provides same-sex couples with the same rights and obligations as opposite sex married couples, including parental rights in relation to children being raised in the relationship.
http://www.samesexmarriage.ca/legal/qc.htmlOf course, the actual issue of the definition of marriage remains a dog's breakfast.
The question of federal legislation defining marriage is all bound up in right-wing demands for "democratization" of Parliament, i.e. to enable idiot back-benchers to have more power by being able to break party ranks with impunity, generally on issues like same-sex marriage, abortion, the kind of blah blah that impresses their right-wing constituents. (I say they were elected as Liberals, on a Liberal Party policy platform, and they can bloody well vote the way they were elected to vote.)
And the questions put to the Supreme Court by the federal government concerning the constitutionality of such legislation if it contains restrictive definitions of marriage (similar to the question put to the Massachusetts court by the state senate) won't be decided for months and months.
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