Télé-Québec’s Zone Franche: Polyamory is Not Polygamy
Polyamory Montreal, in a press release, said that in episode 24 of Zone Franche, a TV show on Télé-Québec, Canadian lawyer and television personality Anne-France Goldwater stated that polyamorous relationships are the equivalent of bigamy and polygamy, and therefore were criminal acts in terms of the law. The episode was broadcast on Jan 6, 2020.
Goldwater’s comments are not true, of course, because on November 23, 2011, British Columbia’s Supreme Court ruled that Section 293 of the Criminal Code of Canada does not apply to unformalized polyamorous relationships. That decision distinguishes polyamory from bigamy and polygamy, and as that decision was not appealed, it effectively makes polyamory legal in Canada where a person is not married in a sanctioned ceremony to more than two people.