Last week an Ontario court judge recognized that a British civil union between a same sex couple should be recognized as a marriage in Ontario for the purposes of divorce, division of assets and support.
In Britain, same sex couples are not allowed to marry. Instead, they are able to form civil unions which provide almost all rights of marriage, except for the name of marriage and ceremonial aspects. In this case, the gay male couple formed a civil union in Britain but after they moved to Ontario one party asked an Ontario court to find that it qualified as a marriage and could be dissolved according to Ontario law. The judge agreed. This agreement was based primarily on the discriminatory denial of marriage to same sex couples in Britain as well as the similarity of British civil unions to marriage in Canadian law.
Interestingly, the Canadian federal government intervened to argue against the recognition of British civil unions as marriages in Canadian law. This may lead people to wonder why the Canadian government would care.
The answer could lie in Canada's policies regarding the recognition of same sex relationships in immigration law. The current policy states that the only relationships recognized for immigration purposes are married relationships (which, in the case of same sex couples must be in a jurisdiction which recognizes same sex marriage), common law relationships (defined by cohabitation of at least one year) and conjugal partner relationships (a committed relationship of at least one year when one party resides outside Canada). Civil unions are not in themselves recognized, although the same sex couple may still be treated as a couple for immigration purposes if they fall into the married, common law, or conjugal partner definition.
It will be interesting to see if the federal government challenges last week's ruling. If they do not, civil unions will be a fourth type of relationship to be recognized in Canadian immigration law.
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