Quebec abandons legislation to regulate surrogate mothers

(Freestocks)

The Legault government has finally come to terms with the fact that it was impossible to adopt a reform as imposing as that of family law in just a few weeks, at the very end of the session.

After having repeatedly claimed that he had all the time necessary to adopt his Bill 2, the Minister of Justice, Simon Jolin-Barrette, announced on Wednesday evening that he was withdrawing two important parts of his legislation, namely the section on filiation and that on surrogate reproduction.

The detailed study of Bill 2, which stretched over 100 pages and included some 360 articles, ended on Wednesday. Only the parts already studied, including the whole issue of sexual identity, gender and recognition of non-binary people, will be subject to a final vote in the coming days.

The promised comprehensive family law reform will therefore be partial and much smaller than expected.

For weeks, all opposition parties have been criticizing the minister for his erratic organization of parliamentary work, believing it impossible to study such a large and complex reform in record time, before the June 10 adjournment.

But "it's only a postponement," the minister assured in his final remarks, promising to return to the charge in a possible second mandate.

Bill 2 was intended to provide a legal framework for agreements between intended parents and a surrogate mother.

The minister tabled the bill on Oct. 21, but it has only recently begun to be considered.

Bill 2, which will amend the Civil Code, aims to bring family law up to date, which has been frozen in time since the early 1980s, even though mores have evolved since then.

The Minister of Justice had no choice but to legislate on the specific issue of gender, having to comply with the Superior Court ruling, handed down by Justice Gregory Moore on Jan. 28, 2021, rendering null and void several articles of the Civil Code deemed discriminatory.

According to this decision, Quebec had to eliminate all forms of discrimination related to gender designation in documents issued by the Directeur de l'état civil.

No one should be forced to identify themselves as male or female. It was also necessary to add the possibility of entering the mention of parent, instead of father or mother, when writing the birth certificate of a child.

In addition to gender issues and the regulation of surrogate reproduction, Bill 2 addresses a range of other issues, including the number of first names on official documents, the rules of filiation, including the presumption of paternity for common-law partners, information disclosed to adopted children, the rights of children growing up in abusive homes, issues of parental authority in cases of abuse and forfeiture of parental authority, and the right of children born to surrogate mothers to know their origins.

-- This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on June 1, 2022.