Canadian Government tables bill to close divorce loophole in same-sex ‘marriages’ of foreigners
OTTAWA, February 20, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Canadian federal Justice Minister Rob Nicholson tabled legislation on February 17 to amend the Civil Marriage Act in order to allow foreign homosexual couples who parachute into Canada to take advantage of our same-sex “marriage” law to just as easily drop in for a divorce.
Currently the law holds that foreign homosexuals who have been married in Canada since 2004, when same-sex “marriage” was effectively legalized, are only considered wed under Canadian law if same-sex “marriage” is also recognized in their home country or state. The Canadian Divorce Act also states that couples who come to Canada to marry must live in the country for at least one year before they can obtain a divorce.
Rob Nicholson
Bill C-32 proposes an amendment to the Civil Marriage Act that would consider the “marriages” of foreign same-sex couples who travel to Canada for the ceremony to be considered valid in Canada, “even if one or both of the non-residents do not, at the time of the marriage, have the capacity to enter into it under the law of their respective state of domicile.”
The amendment also proposes to establish “a new divorce process that allows a Canadian court to grant a divorce to non-resident spouses who reside in a state where a divorce cannot be granted to them because that state does not recognize the validity of their marriage.”
“Recently, it came to light that there was an anomaly in our civil-marriage laws,” Justice Minister Nicholson told the media after introducing the legislation. “We are fixing the anomaly in the law.”
The “anomaly” came to light in January at a court hearing into a divorce application by a lesbian couple, one from Florida and the other from the UK, who were “married” in Toronto in 2005, but never lived in Canada.
Federal Department of Justice lawyer Sean Gaudet told the court that same-sex foreign couples that came to Canada to “marry” because their home countries do not recognize homosexual “marriage” are not in fact legally “married,” and that the Divorce Act stipulation of 12 month’s residency in Canada in order to file for divorce applied.
“In this case, neither party had the legal capacity to marry a person of the same sex under the laws of their respective domiciles – Florida and the United Kingdom,” Mr. Gaudet stated. “As a result, their marriage is not legally valid under Canadian law.”
Gaudet’s statement provoked outrage from homosexualists and opposition parties, who accused the Conservative government of Stephen Harper of a hidden agenda to “take away same-sex rights by stealth” and said that Canada’s same-sex “marriage” laws will be made an international laughingstock.
However, the Harper government moved swiftly to soothe gay “marriage” advocates and accommodate foreign homosexual couples, with Bill C-32 as the result.
The full text of Bill C-32, short titled, “Civil Marriage of Non-residents Act” is available here.
Contact Information to express your concern:
Canadian Federal Department of Justice
contact through website here
contact through website here
Prime Minister Stephen Harper
Office of the Prime Minister
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A2
Fax: 613-941-6900
E-mail: pm@pm.gc.ca
Website: http://pm.gc.ca/eng/contact.asp
Office of the Prime Minister
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A2
Fax: 613-941-6900
E-mail: pm@pm.gc.ca
Website: http://pm.gc.ca/eng/contact.asp
