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By: Skyler Chahal
1969 - following Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s famous comment that “there is no place for the State in the bedrooms of the nation”, Bill C-150 was passed which made amendments to the Criminal Code. These changes decriminalized “gross indecency” and “buggery”, if committed in private between two consenting adults over the age of 21. The Criminal Code was further amended in later years, including a drop in age-of-consent to 18 (for anal sex) and 14 for other forms of sexual activity. The higher age of consent for anal sex has been recognized as unconstitutional by both the Ontario and Quebec Courts of Appeal.
1977 - those provisions in the Immigration Act which had previously barred homosexuals from immigrating to Canada, were repealed.
1982 - Canada adopted the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms as part of the new Canadian Constitution. The equality guarantees of the Charter came into effect in 1985, providing LGBT people with the tools to challenge any discriminatory law. The Supreme Court of Canada has since ruled that sexual orientation is deemed to be included as an identifiable characteristic, for purposes of protection or non-discrimination.
1992 - Parliament removed the prohibition on lesbians, gays and bisexuals serving in the military, as a result of a court challenge in Douglas v. Canada.
1992 - BC amended its human rights legislation to include sexual orientation as a prohibited ground of discrimination, and extended workplace medical benefits to same-sex partners of government employees. (BC has not added “gender identity” to its human rights, despite considerable pressure to do so since 1997. The North West Territories is currently the only Canadian jurisdiction to include “gender identity” as an area of protection against discrimination.)
1995 - Parliament amended the Criminal Code to provide increased penalties for crimes motivated by hatred on certain grounds, including sexual orientation. As a result, hate crimes such as gay-bashings will now receive more severe penalties. (Transgender people are not explicitly covered by these provisions, although they may have protection on the ground of “sex”.) These amendments applied only to sentencing, and did not affect the substantive “hate propaganda” provisions in the Criminal Code, which prohibit promoting hatred against certain groups. Bill C-250 passed the House of Commons in Sept. 2003, so the Code will soon include gays, lesbians, and bisexuals among the groups protected from “hate propaganda”.
1996 – a new Adoption Act came into force, which enabled same-sex couples to apply to adopt as couples (rather than separately) for the first time in Canada.
1997 - BC amended the definition of “spouse” in the Family Relations Act and the Family Maintenance Enforcement Act to accord to same-sex couples the same custody, maintenance and support rights and responsibilities as those accorded to heterosexual couples, and to allow same-sex couples to register agreements relating to cohabitation and property division.
September 14, 1999 - Bill C-78 amended the Public Service Superannuation Act to extend survivor pension benefits to same-sex couples.
1999 - The Supreme Court of Canada ruled, in M v H, that it is unconstitutional to deny same-sex couples equality. Since that time, many governments across Canada have embarked on programs of wholesale legislative reform. Adoption rights, inheritance, spousal support – these and many other rights previously reserved for heterosexuals are gradually being extended to same-sex couples.
2000 - Parliament passes Bill C-23, the Modernization of Benefits and Obligations Act. This omnibus legislation amended 68 federal statutes to provide all common-law relationships (including same-sex) with nearly all the rights and responsibilities of heterosexual married couples under federal law. An added clause in the preamble defines marriage as “…the lawful union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others”. However, the effects of the legislation are to treat same-sex couples equally in areas such as tax, pensions, employment insurance and conflict-of-interest laws. Under Bill C-23, same-sex survivors were only entitled to survivors’ benefits under the Canada Pension Plan if their partner died after Dec. 31, 1997, but a class action lawsuit on behalf of persons whose same-sex partners died before 1998, was successfully concluded in Dec. 2003.
July 28, 2000 - the Health Care (Consent) and Care Facility (Admission) Act enables lesbians, gays and bisexuals to make medical decisions on behalf of a same-sex partner who is incapacitated.
2000 - Under two Definition of Spouse Amendment Acts, 1999 and 2000, 23 amendments to various Acts came into force on July 28, 2000, and a further 27 amendments on November 1, 2000. These changes consolidated the definition of spouse to include a person who has lived with another person for a period of at least two years in a marriage-like relationship. This ensures that same-sex couples are treated equally in many areas such as inheritance, estates, property law, and conflict of interest provisions. They also standardize existing provisions that already included same-sex spouses (e.g.- the Adult Guardianship Act).
May 15, 2001 - Canada’s Census asked Canadians for the first time whether they were “living with a common-law partner”, which included same-sex partners. No question was asked about sexual orientation, nor about gender identity. October 22, 2002 - Statistics Canada released results which showed a total of 34,200 same-sex common-law couples reporting their relationships, representing 0.5% of couples who reported. About 15% of lesbian couples and 3% of gay male couples reported raising children. Statistics Canada acknowledged this under-reporting of same-sex relationships and expects that in future years more LGBT persons will respond affirmatively to the question.
November, 2001 - The Immigration and Refugee Protection Act was passed. The law now recognizes “common-law partners”, including same-sex couples, as members of the family class, so a same-sex partner of an LGBT Canadian is now eligible to immigrate to Canada. Previously, same-sex partners could only be admitted on a case-by-case basis on humanitarian or compassionate grounds. The definition of “common-law partner” [defined as someone who has been in a conjugal relationship for at least a year] is set out in the new immigration regulations, which took effect June 28, 2002. Several groups had argued that the original “cohabitation” requirement was unworkable for many lesbian or gay couples; the government agreed. Lesbians, gays and bisexuals with a well-founded fear of persecution based on sexual orientation have now been recognized as eligible to immigrate to Canada as refugees.