NATIONAL POST ASKS IF HARPER PREPARED TO USE NOTWITHSTANDING CLAUSE

APR 14, 2005 NATIONAL POST (NATIONAL EDITION) PAGE: A20 (EDITORIALS)

Stephen Harper's motion to abandon debate on the government's same-sex marriage bill ended predictably on Tuesday night. Observers had forecast for some time that the vote would end up precisely as it did -- with a minority of Liberals voting for it, a handful of Conservatives voting against it, other MPs voting along party lines and the motion being defeated.

The Conservative leader's effort will burnish his image as a champion of the traditional definition of marriage. But it is also inconsistent with his demand that the issue get a full airing in Parliament. If passed, the motion would have prevented the bill from being studied closely by the Justice Committee, where MPs could question the government's purported protections of religious freedoms in detail. And it would have done little to address Canada's uneven patchwork approach to same-sex marriage, which has seen courts in seven provinces and one territory legalize it since 2003.

Rather than simply try to trip up the Liberals' legislation, Mr. Harper should spell out what exactly his party would do about the issue if elected. Having pledged to restore the traditional definition of marriage, he has been unclear about how that could be done. After all, an ordinary act of Parliament won't stop gay marriages from being performed in jurisdictions where courts have made constitutional decisions overruling the traditional definition. If the Conservatives really want to protect the traditional definition, they would likely have to draft their own legislation, defend it at the Supreme Court of Canada and then be prepared to invoke the notwithstanding clause of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms if the Court ruled against them -- as would likely be the case.

Is Mr. Harper prepared to go this route? Canadians on all sides of the same-sex marriage debate deserve to know.