Conservatives aware of same sex marriage legal issues for months

Minister warned of legal problem by New Democrats months ago but failed to act

OTTAWA- With the Harper government scrambling to fix the confusion it has caused around the validity of thousands of same sex marriages, New Democrats are pointing out that the Harper government has repeatedly tried to roll back equal marriage rights.

“This isn’t something that happened over night, this has been going on for months now,” said Randall Garrison, the New Democrat critic for LGBT Issues. “It was a government lawyer that was once again trying to use a loophole in the current law to erode the rights of these families. It is hard to believe that no one in Cabinet knew about this as I had asked the Minister of Justice about this problem in the House of Commons last October.”

This is the second time the Harper government has intervened in a court case regarding same sex divorce. In October, they intervened to try and deny legal validity to gay civil partnerships from the UK.

“We welcome today’s statement that the Harper government accepts the validity of all same sex marriages in Canada and will move to amend the Divorce Act to allow marriages entered into in Canada to be dissolved here regardless of their legal status elsewhere,” Garrison said.

“However the Minister of Justice has now been twice caught trying to chip away at same sex marriage rights by intervening in court cases to oppose equal marriage,” said Garrison. “If the Prime Minister is serious about not reopening this issue he will instruct his Minister of Justice to stop trying to roll back the clock on equal marriage.”