There is no reason to change the definition of spouse in the benefit plan for government employees, an Alberta cabinet minister in charge of human resources said Monday.

"I don't see the problem," Treasury Board president Lloyd Snelgrove said.

A booklet distributed to civil servants last spring defined a spouse as someone of the opposite sex. Gay and lesbian couples who are married are called "benefit partners" in the same document, even though same-sex marriage has been legal in Alberta since July 2005.

But Snelgrove said the government gives all employees equal coverage, so he has no intention of changing the definition of spouse to include people in same-sex marriages.

"Now if the government as a whole decides that they want to review terminology around a spouse, that's a little bigger thing because I would imagine there's more departments [like] justice that would use that same definition," he said.

But former government employee Scott Mair called the terminology discriminatory. Mair ended up quitting his job several months after he received the booklet last spring because he felt he was being treated differently because he was married to a man.

Liberal MLA Laurie Blakeman said when she raised the wording issue with a high-ranking official in the human resources department, she was told a mistake had been made.

"I had assurances from them that it would be addressed immediately," she said.

The province plans to change its human rights legislation this spring to prevent discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, more than a decade after the Supreme Court of Canada ordered the Alberta government to include those protections.

Since then, a Supreme Court decision in 1998 has offered default protection to residents.

The minister in charge of the Alberta Human Rights Commission, Lindsay Blackett, said he was surprised to see the wording in the government's benefits package. He said it may be something the government will have to change when revisions are made to human rights legislation.