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than Canadian residing in Canada affect their Member of Parliament s stance on same
sex marriage
Because the study results yielded so few of the expected outcomes additional
analysis should be conducted with the data set as it was used for this study I reviewed
religious preference with regard to the total House of Commons voting outcome rather
than breaking it out territory by territory Further insight may be gained by examining
religious affiliation at different interval levels or utilizing different means of
classification Thorough review of the raw data for religious preference should also be
undertaken and attempts made to account for non Christian religious preference rather
than merely Catholic Protestant and non religious preferences Further examination
must also take Quebec into account as a statistical outlier in order to better isolate the
effects of religious preference on same sex marriage issues
Numerous challenges arose in examining Parliamentary votes on Division No
and
Data was inconsistent from
to
due to the occurrence of the
national census federal redistricting and significant changes to the composition of
Canadian Federal Electoral Districts and the body of the House of Commons Extensive
analysis should be undertaken to create a data set for which more accurate comparisons
of the two votes can be drawn As it stands there was not sufficient data available to
create a completely symmetric treatment of the two votes in relation to one another in
the same study
Although there are rich data sources available for Members of Canadian
Parliament and their constituencies in
the data is still compromised by an inability
to establish nonspuriousness Because the
vote was a deemed a vote of conscience
it is difficult if not impossible to ascertain which votes were cast on the basis political
party or the will of the constituency versus which votes were cast purely on the moral
and ethical stance of the individual Member In a last minute strategy Members were
also confronted with challenges to the notwithstanding clause in the motion meaning
that some Members objected to the motion not because it banned same sex marriage but
because it indicated that Parliament take all necessary steps to defend the definition
of marriage as stated Those Members objection was a procedural one based more on
the proper role of Parliament than it was an indication of support or opposition for
same sex marriage Perhaps the only way to ascertain influence on the vote with
significant confidence is through direct survey of the members of the House of
Commons with questions directed toward their voting decisions on the definition of
marriage motions for
and
Recent Canadian progress toward including same sex couples in the definition of
marriage has led to heavy scrutiny of same sex marriage as a federal policy initiative
The issue has become a high profile political and social debate significantly
aggrandized by the Canadian media Policy makers both for and against same sex
marriage remain bitterly divided and some place enormous pressure on those
Convention