ame sex partners the fulllegal right to "marry," but recognize this conjugal union with a distinctive name; as I noted, there are political and legalarguments that might justify this distinctive treatment. However, I do not think that the federal government could invoke s.91(26) to create a new "marriage-like" status (which I will refer to in this paper as the registered domestic partnership),which would give the parties most but not all of the rights and obligations of a spouse, for example by excluding rights inregard to children. Any federal RDP legislation that does not equate the essential rights and obligations of same sex andopposite sex spouses would be creating a new type of "near-marital" status and would be limited by the Constitution Act ,1867 to areas within exclusive federal jurisdiction, such as the Canada Pension Plan, immigration and federal income tax.Such federal "near-marital" RDP legislation could not affect legal status for purposes of provincial areas of responsibility suchas property rights on termination of the relationship. There is a significant area of provincial jurisdictional responsibility under the provincial power over "property and civil rights"under s. 92(13) of the Constitution Act for creation of a set of "near-marital"(or "spouse-like") rights and obligations forthose in a RDP. The provinces have the jurisdiction under s. 92(13) to grant limited "spousal status" for many important legalpurposes to same sex partners and other cohabitants, on such terms as the provinces may chose (subject to the Charterprovisions prohibiting discrimination). Thus, there are this complex jurisdictional issues to address in establishing a near-marital RDP scheme. There would need tobe both federal and provincial RDP laws to have a comprehensive scheme. Hopefully any federal law would recognizeRDP's made under any provincial laws as valid for federal purposes as well as allowing RDP's for federal purposes for thosewho re...
