Mr. Speaker, like so many people I am concerned about the health technologies, and having followed the proceedings of the Baird commission, which went on for a number of years, I looked forward to the tabling of the federal government's bill on reproductive and genetic technologies.
There are many new approaches to health care and research, and one of them involves altering the genetic code. This is useful because some diseases can be cured in this way, and now we can see whether babies who are still in their mother's womb are likely to have certain health problems and then try to correct them. There are many reasons why we were looking forward to this bill. And especially since there is both a moral and a medical dimension.
When we started altering the genetic code and talking about sex selection and the various technologies that are possible, when we talk about the sale of embryos and surrogate mothers, this is what society has been debating in Canada and Quebec for years.
I expected the federal government's bill to be complete at least in one respect. I listened to the speech by the member for Laurentides, and I realize that eventually another bill will compensate for the shortcomings in the one before the House today.
I just want to put a question to the hon. member for Laurentides, considering the fact that Canada, in its present state, is a vast country whose diversity is such that people differ in the way they see things.
I realize, as I read polls like Angus Reid, that people in Quebec and the Atlantic provinces do not react in the same way to certain questions as people in British Columbia and Western Canada.
I think this might be one of those areas where we should have decentralized. This is probably one of those areas where we should not have national standards. I am not saying that ethics should vary from one area to the next, because I think certain practices should be condemned in Quebec as well as in British Columbia or the Atlantic provinces, but I think that depending on the location, there may be a way to put some different interpretations on certain practices.
If we had decentralized towards the provinces, since health care is their jurisdiction, I think we would have had a better and more flexible interpretation of the legislation. What I am afraid of in this area is uniformity, the federal approach, the national approach. I do not think this area is one that lends itself to uniformization.
My question to my colleague is this: even if we did not consider the constitutional implications, according to her, would it have been better to proceed with a form of decentralization, to amend the Criminal Code and let the provinces be responsible for enforcement, so that enforcement could be flexible across what is now Canada?