Thank you, Madam Chairperson. I will support this motion. I am sorry, supporting this bill. It is an area that I was involved in, in the last Assembly, Madam Chairperson, when this Assembly amended our adoption laws to legalize the adoption rights and responsibilities of a couple if they are of the same sex and recognizing how we are to manage and set laws for adopting children.
At the time, it was made quite clear that if we were to take that step, as we did, there would be further consequential changes to many of our other laws, which also needed to reflect the new definitions. There are significant decisions in other courts of Canada, Madam Chairperson, which also compel the Northwest Territories to bring its own statutes in line with those new amendments in Canadian law.
Madam Chairperson, I don't have the Hansard before me, but I recall parts of that debate. I think a number of the reasons that compelled me to vote in favour of the adoption law a few years ago also compel me to vote in favour of these changes.
Madam Chairperson, there are a lot of things over time that change in a society and our levels of tolerance, of acceptance of natural justice of human rights are things that in the course of Canadian history we can all mark. I would look at such milestones as granting the right to vote to women in the 1920s as something that, at that time, was an enormous change in the value system of governing and giving people rights to have a say in what was going to happen.
But you know something? Women now have the right to vote. To even think of bringing that idea back, that women should not be allowed to vote, is absolutely unthinkable. Madam Chairperson, the same step was taken sometime in the 1950s regarding the right of aboriginal people to have a vote in Canada. What an astounding change of value and tolerance and acceptance in our land.
Again, to look at that it would be a heresy to think that we should not accept that now. As society and acceptance and tolerance in the values of society have changed, so now have we come to accept the choice of some people to not partner with people of the opposite sex and yet, in the community and in the obligations and responsibilities that they take on, that same-sex couples take on among themselves, for me, Madam Chairperson, it does not just say okay we are extending a right, as this bill says, a benefit or an obligation. It is a further recognition that these people do have responsibilities in society, to themselves and to their community.
This is a two-way street and I am entirely convinced that amending our laws to recognize what obligations and benefits should be afforded same-sex couples in many different areas is also reflective of society's expectation that they will also take these on as promises and obligations and responsibilities that they have amongst themselves and to themselves and to their peers and their neighbours and other Canadians.
Those are the values that I bring to the table on this issue, Madam Chairperson. I am going to be pleased and proud to say yes to this bill when the amendments and the clause by clause begin. Thank you, Madam Chairperson.