Minister of Justice asked to investigate polygamy in BC
 
By Mark Kelley
CBC-TV The National Transcripts
 
MARK KELLEY: The Minister of Justice has been asked to investigate the practises of a church in British Columbia. It practises polygamy. The leader of the church, who grew up with more than one mother, admits he has more than one wife. They all live together in a compound in the town of Lister, BC, near the border with Idaho. The CBC's Kelly Crowe has the story.

KELLY CROWE (Reporter): They call it Bountiful. A quiet place with a reputation. That's because Bountiful is known as a community where it's normal to have more than one wife. Leader Winston Blackmore says polygamy has always been a part of his religion.

WINSTON BLACKMORE (Church Leader): I am what I am. I was born that and I was born to a father that, and family that had more mothers than one. And I've never known anything different.

CROWE: Bountiful is a breakaway group from the Mormon church which formally rejected polygamy more than a century ago. Blackmore refuses to discuss his private life. In the past, he's admitted to having more than one wife, and so have other men in the community.

BLACKMORE: Can't you possibly conceive that two women would choose to have the same companion.

CROWE: It's a practice that is illegal under Canada's criminal code. Under section 293, every one who enters into any kind of conjugal union with more than one person at the same time is guilty of an indictable offence. Winston Blackmore says the practice is protected under the Charter of Rights.

BLACKMORE: It is the charter, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms which is a wonderful piece which protects all people everywhere in the right to live their religion because you see this is what we are.

CROWE: Ten years ago, police investigated two men in the community and recommended they be charged with polygamy at that time. The BC crown attorney's office didn't follow it up, saying it didn't think it could get a conviction. Since then, Bountiful has almost doubled to more than seven hundred people. And once again, there are outside concerns about what is going on here. Deborah Palmer is a former member. She was married to 57-year old man who already had two wives. After more than thirty years she left. She's was only fifteen when she was first married, and she's concerned that the issue of teenage brides is not being investigated.

DEBORAH PALMER (Former Member): There's something wrong with that and something needs to be done to control that because that, that shouldn't happen. That's very, a very terrible thing to happen in a society like we have.

CROWE: Just last week, she wrote a letter to Justice Minister Anne McLellan calling for an investigation into the community. She wrote, "I would like to know how your office intends to respond to the issue of under-age girls being brought into Canada from the United States and married as polygamous wives". The federal Justice Minister says this a provincial matter. The BC Attorney General's office says it's a police matter. The police say they have not received any complaints, so as far as they are concerned it's not an issue. So at this point, the only group investigating polygamy in Bountiful is the media. Kelly Crowe, CBC News, Vancouver.
 
CBC-TV The National Transcripts
Originally published January 13, 2000
 
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