Polyamorists in Canada have said they want the same legal status as other relationships, following their first 
national convention.
Polyamory involves intimate relationships between three or more people at the same time.
Canada redefined marriage in 2005 to allow same-sex marriage and saw a major legal case involving polygamy in 2011, the Vancouver Sun reports. The court on that occasion did not recognise polygamy.
The Canadian Polyamory Advocacy Association intervened in the case and now says it wants to see polyamorous relationships treated on the same legal footing as others.
The Association’s director, Zoe Duff, said she would like to see “households where our spouses are equal under the law, and moving forward in terms of pensions, and inheritances and property division”.
The group defines polyamory as having “more than one intimate relationship at a time with the knowledge and consent of everyone involved”.
The group say they “live all gender combinations”, and are “queer-friendly”.
One panellist at the convention said she took home two partners to a family event last year, and claimed that polyamory is a viable alternative to monogamy.
Polyamory came to the forefront in 2011, when the British Columbia Supreme Court upheld Canada’s polygamy law after the province launched a constitutional reference case to clarify the law.
The court concluded that even though the ban against polygamy infringes on religious freedoms, the harms it said are associated with the practice, such as child brides and sexual abuse, outweigh those rights.
However polyamorists saw the decision as a victory because the decision also concluded that anti-polygamy laws shouldn’t apply to polyamorous couples unless they decide to get married.