Bill C-38 is not yet law

[c9]

I'm very pleased, as are many of you, that Bill C-38 passed the House of Commons last night. The vote was 158-133, which means that not only did it win by 25 votes, but even if everyone who was away had voted against it, it still would have passed by 8 votes. Not really a landslide, but human rights are consistently hard to win majority approval for, in most countries.

But it's not law yet! In Canada, when a bill passes the House of Commons, it must then also be passed by the Senate. After that, it awaits Royal Assent in the form of a signature by the Governor General. Incidentally, the Senate can pass things first and then send them to the House.

The Senate is currently two-thirds Liberal, and in Canada the Governor General does not act against the Prime Minister's wishes except in very extreme circumstances. So neither of those steps is in doubt, but the Senate has all the same processes and committees as the House, so we have First Reading, Second Reading, Committee leading to Report Stage, and the Final Third Reading. It's possible for bills to be tied up in the Senate for months, but the current rumour is that things will go very quickly. From a correspondent in London with ears on the Hill:

It will go through 1st and 2nd reading immediately, possibly today, and then be sent to a Senate committee for review. The expectation is the committee will return the bill for 3rd reading early next week, with a possible vote by the middle of the week.

The Senate has fewer rules allowing closure, but Jack Austin, the Gov house leader in the senate was making clear he would use time allocation of the debate in the Senate was not producing anything new -- that is, anything other than obstruction and delay.

So the GG could have it by next week, probably at the latest.

It all depends on what happens today.

Will we have equal marriage by Canada Day? Highly unlikely. By August 1st? Almost guaranteed.

Downside: this leaves time for Spain to win the bronze, so to speak, and become the third country to really allow equal marriage everywhere in law. But with the protests there, maybe it will be slowed down. Hard to tell.

Comments

[putaindemerde.livejournal.com]

In a sense (slow-moving or not), we're already there, Cam. MA is the only state in the country who has said "yes" to gay marriage, even if it's possible that this is only temporary. The fact is: if someone walks into my life tomorrow and our relationship grows into something where marriage is an option - say, next winter or spring - then I can walk into the town hall where I live and get a marriage license. If I marry somebody before the people vote against the matter (which could happen, as you know), I will be grandfathered in, along with everyone else. Towns, cities, employers, anyone in the state of MA will be forced to recognize that I am married to another man until we're dead.

So I'd really like to claim the bronze medal for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts... for now, anyway. You can take it back for Canada later, if necessary since anything is possible with Mitt the Shit and his band of merry fuckwads... but, deep down, I'd like to think we may actually retain the right far beyond this little obstacle that the conservatives are trying to assemble.

[c9.livejournal.com]

*grin* Too true.

[putaindemerde.livejournal.com]

Slightly off-topic, did I read on Wikipedia that gay divorce was made legal last year in Ontario, and that you guys are the first province au Canada to do so?

I could have been imagining it...