(from a Globe and Mail editorial)

The courts in all three provinces were clear: The common law, an accretion of past judicial rulings, violates Section 15 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which has been read to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The judges struck down the common law's definition of marriage: "the lawful and voluntary union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others."

But their remedies differed. Quebec's Superior Court declared that its ruling would not take effect until Sept. 6, 2004, and Ontario's Superior Court and the B.C. Court of Appeal postponed the effect of their rulings until July 12, 2004, to give the federal and provincial governments time to redraft their own laws.

Yet the Ontario Court of Appeal, when it struck down the common law this month, made its change effective immediately. It said, in effect, that it didn't owe Parliament anything, since the change was to judge-made common law, not to Parliament's laws.