The Canada Interactive Legislature (CIL) appears to have the legal power to create alternative polygamy laws for anyone in Canada who is dissatisfied with being threatened with up to five years of jail time for practicing a marital status that involves more than one spouse.
I would like to explain why I favour certain restrictions being placed upon anyone who uses the CIL’s defence from polygamy and bigamy laws. The restrictions that I am advocating for are:
- a heterosexual man can have at most one more spouse than the least number of spouses wedded to any of his wives, and
- unless otherwise agreed upon at the time of marriage with each other existing spouse, a union with an additional spouse requires the permission of each other present spouse, and
- unless otherwise agreed upon at the time of marriage, and without preempting any other considerations concurrently existing in the law, as a starting point, the portion of the estate of a spouse being divorced that shall be received by a divorcing spouse shall be divided by one more than the number of spouses of the spouse being divorced and then divided again by the number of spouses of the divorcing spouse, and an estate is divided between the deceased’s spouses upon one’s death, with each spouse receiving a portion of the estate that is inversely proportional to her, his, or their number of spouses (including the deceased).
My legal training has led me to discover an enormous resource for the CIL in crafting alternative laws to Canada’s polygamy laws. I came up with the above three conditions after reading it. It was a case in 2011 in which the Supreme Court of British Columbia decided how polygamy laws must be interpreted, binding on BC courts. The name of the decision is Reference re: Section 293 of the Criminal Code of Canada, 2011 BCSC 1588 (CanLII) [the Reference].
The Reference states (at para 879) that the purpose of the enforcement of polygamy laws started out, when those laws were first enacted in the late 19th century, as prevention and reduction of: exploitation and enslavement of women; rivalry and violence in the household; privileging of the rich who participate in marriage at the cost of fit men who did not have the capacity to enter marriage because they didn’t have the capital; exploitation of women in the household itself, the favouring of some and the diminishment of others; children being raised in those households being subject to the discord, to the violence, to the favouritism, the incapacity of those children to learn the habits of citizenship that they need; and coercion of young, of vulnerable children, especially young girls, into relationships.
The Reference goes on to state (at para 881) that the purpose of the polygamy laws presently in the Criminal Code of Canada, RSC 1985, c C-46 (sections 290 and 293 here) remains consistent in nature as when they were enacted, but sums up the purpose more briefly and concisely as: to address the harms viewed as arising from polygamy; harms to women, to children, to society and, importantly, to the institution of monogamous marriage.
I advocate for all of the above-described forms of harm (portrayed with substantial evidence by the Supreme Court of BC) to be recognized and legislatively deterred by the CIL except the last one: harms to the institution of monogamous marriage. I do not believe that allowing people to consensually exist in legally recognized multi-spousal situations detracts even slightly from the ability of people who enjoy monogamous spousal relationships to benefit from already-existing policies designed to be supportive of legal monogamous marriages.
The three conditions described above for the CIL to require of its adherents in return for its authentication of their defence to polygamy or bigamy charges are intended and believed to be a full, effective, and meaningful prevention of the kinds of harms enumerated by the BC Supreme Court as being associated with polygamy, other than the potentially inert, alleged threat to the institution of monogamous marriage itself.
But why, you may be asking, why beat up on those poor heterosexual men? Why put restrictions upon them that nobody else is required to follow? What have they done wrong?
I’m going to give the shorter, more controversial answer to that question here. If you want more details, you’ll have to ask me. You can find my contact info on my business card on page 2 here: https://issociety.org/wp-content/uploads/business-cards.pdf.
A couple of centuries of respectable, persistent feminism has achieved some fortunate reductions in gender tyranny: women’s suffrage, women having the right to have bank accounts and credit cards, etc, but what has not yet been responsibly conceded to feminism despite the obvious fairness of it is gender pay equity.
I advocate that once gender pay equity is achieved, then the above restriction on heterosexual men should certainly be lifted. Any form of punishment that appears to be intended for eternal (or lifelong) infliction can clearly be seen to be the product of a mind rooted in tyranny.
If you would like to prevent me from enacting these alternative laws to allow polygamy in Canada under some clearly defined restrictions protective of vulnerable groups, then it would most certainly be commendable for you to become a candidate for legislative authority in the CIL, and if you get more votes than me, feel free to seek the CIL’s resolution on some other form of alternative to Canadian polygamy laws, or perhaps even no exemptions whatsoever for CIL adherents from polygamy laws if that’s what you prefer. It would be the right place for us to continue this debate, respectfully in front of the voters, and I have a lot more to say about it. Just so you know, the way the CIL works, every voter has one vote that can be cast for any candidate at any time that the voter wishes and changed to any other candidate at any time after that, with no deadline or finish date. So if you want to run against me for democratically affirmed legislative authority in the CIL, you may expect to be held accountable, transparent, and forthcoming with all relevant information and reasoning for your stance, on an ongoing basis. It takes courage to be a candidate in this form of election, unlike the cowards in conventional federal and provincial legislatures who condone arbitrary, insidious deadlines being placed upon voters, coercing them to make choices for which they might not feel sufficient information has been publicly circulated. If you are indeed in possession of such courage, then I look forward to seeing CIL voters be grateful to you for giving them further considerations on this matter in comparison to the ones I offer.
If you disagree as to whether or not the CIL has the legal status to be able to make alternative laws for its adherents in Canada that they may be governed by, in place of laws on similar matters as asserted by the House of Commons and the federal government, then you may read our constitutional claims in Appendix A of the CIL Charter, starting on page 10, to see for yourself what is written in the law about the CIL’s alleged legal status. You might want to also ask the Vancouver Police Department and Burnaby RCMP why they still haven’t busted me for the many grams of cocaine I still have in my possession. Maybe they can explain to you whether there’s any other reason than that my constitutional defence appears, based on court precedent, to be legitimate.