Talk:Equality Rights Statute Amendment Act

Untitled

"Despite the changes, the bill did not formally confer same-sex marriage rights in the province, instead creating a status closely resembling civil unions, nor did it extend adoption rights for same-sex couples.[1]"

Actually, the question of whom can lawfully marry is a federal one in Canada, so provincial legislation can't resolve this issue. Adoption could have been addressed provincially, but addressing what was then a most controversial question would have been politically inadvisable as it would only increase the certainty of the bill's defeat on a free vote in Queen's Park (there were other, less controversial issues that needed addressing first). I'd suspect adoption was dropped from this otherwise omnibus bill as a desperate last-minute attempt at political compromise when there was uncertainty on whether there were enough votes (absent the use of party discipline) to pass this. 66.102.83.61 (talk) 15:26, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

On the definition of marriage, you are correct that it's a federal matter; however, in this context it does need to be clarified that the bill didn't (and couldn't) change that. I've added an additional sentence to the intro to clarify any potential confusion.

Going by my recollection of the matter (which was, granted, a long, long time ago now), I also believe that you're correct that adoption was dropped as a compromise rather than having been officially excluded right from the start; however, at present, it would take additional source research to confirm that as the sources I found in the process of writing this didn't address that explicitly enough. Accordingly, I left the sentence generic enough that it's not wrong as it stands, but can still be expanded upon as I find additional sources. That's the good thing about Wikipedia, our articles can always be updated as new information and additional sources come available. Bearcat (talk) 16:22, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Proper source found for the adoption situation. Bearcat (talk) 17:04, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Name change proposal

Since bill numbers are reused during different sessions of the legislature, I propose that this article be given a more meaningful name, ie. Same-sex spousal recognition act. Since 1994 the term "Bill 167" has been used for in 2009 for the Toxics Reduction Act and in 2011 for the Supply Act. Bill 167 can still be referred to in the article but I think the title should be changed. Comments are appreciated. EncyclopediaUpdaticus (talk) 23:45, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

At the time I created this article, I was not able to find a reliable source for the exact full name of this piece of legislation, so I used the name that was most commonly used in the available sources. If you've got a source which can confirm the exact full name that was actually used, I agree that it would be more appropriate than the current title, as "bill" numbers are frequently reused in multiple contexts, including other legislatures and even other sessions of the same legislature. It's also worth noting, for the record, that not all pieces of legislation necessarily qualify for independent articles (a Supply Act, in particular, being one of those that's especially unlikely, since it's just an annual budget implementation bill), but I agree that if there were other notable pieces of legislation which bore the bill number 167, then this title should indeed become a disambiguation page instead. Bearcat (talk) 17:56, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

I was able today to confirm the exact, correct name for this legislation. Accordingly I've moved the article, revised all links to point here instead of the "Bill 167" redirect, and then deleted that redirect since it has too diverse a set of potential meanings to justify keeping it as a redirect to this specific one alone. A disambiguation page would be an acceptable reuse of the title if anyone can put time and energy into creating one. Bearcat (talk) 18:06, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

The title it's at now looks like it's the long title; did the bill not have a short title? (Assuming that Ontario follows the usual Westminster-style practise when it comes to titles.) WP:NC-GAL says we should generally use the short title rather than the long. - htonl (talk) 00:19, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Further: evidently the short title was "Equality Rights Statute Amendment Act" (or "Equality Rights Statute Amendment Bill", I guess, since it didn't pass). (Cite: here.) But the vast majority of references are to Bill 167, so WP:COMMONNAME seems to imply we should use that. Maybe, to avoid ambiguity, it could go at something like Ontario Bill 167 (1994)? - htonl (talk) 00:26, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia specifically deprecates using the bill number as the primary title for an article on a piece of legislation; we can certainly note it in the body text, and we can redirect a title like your proposal to the correctly titled article, but we can't make a title of that type the article's main title. For the record, I have no objection to moving the page again to the short form name if there's an actual reliable source for it — the link you've provided above leads only to a "page that is unavailable for viewing or you have reached your viewing limit for this book" error, and my research efforts hadn't turned up a proper source at all (which is why I used the long form title in the interim.) Bearcat (talk) 00:33, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Never mind the error message problem, I tried again and the link worked properly this time — accordingly, I've moved the article and sourced the new title to that book's publication info. Bearcat (talk) 00:34, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Great. I'm happy with the short title as well; I can see how using bill numbers would be problematic. - htonl (talk) 00:44, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Just for the record, there is a disambiguation page already in place at the Bill 167 title, so people who only know it by that name can still find it that way. There may, of course, still be other pieces of legislation which should be listed there which I didn't know about. Bearcat (talk) 00:56, 10 February 2013 (UTC)