Mr. Speaker, when it comes to the amendment and what legislation is going to be brought forward in the next few months, one of the pieces of legislation of concern to me is Bill C-56. We have been dealing with this bill in the health committee for the last 18 months.
I read the Speech from the Throne and I listened to it very carefully. I was particularly struck that there was no reference to this piece of legislation in it whatsoever. It is a very controversial piece of legislation and one that is very important to the ethics of the nation. Whether what it was called was appropriate or not was something that was discussed in the health committee. We dealt with it for a considerable amount of time. We listened to some of the best witnesses when it comes to reproductive technology from across the country and around the world.
Reproductive technology was the name of the bill. At the end of our consultations we said maybe it should not be called reproductive technology because it encompassed so much. It encompassed two aspects. It dealt with reproduction and the true desire of families to reproduce and some of their problems as well as in vitro fertilization and what comes out of that.
On the other side was the ethical dynamic or the related science. This is putting a lot of people in this country in a very uneasy position because of what actually happens when we take life at its earliest and most vulnerable stage and destroy it to create stem cells. The stem cells would potentially be built into another organ and transplanted. That research and its potential is something we have wrestled with.
It is very important that this piece of legislation come forward. There has been a void in this kind of legislation and there has been for 10 years, a decade of the government's reign. We have seen this piece of legislation die on the Order Paper before. We need a political resolve to bring this forward and deal with it in an effective way for Canada because of advancements in technologies that are taking place. Researchers across Canada and in other places around the world say reproductive cloning will be done within the next six months or so. We have absolutely nothing on the books to regulate this from happening in Canada, yet it is universal.
The previous health minister at an international convention in Geneva a year ago last spring said that we need an international consensus on this issue. There is an international consensus and that is that reproductive cloning should not take place.
I am very concerned with some of the things that this piece of legislation deals with because of the complexity of the material. There are two sides to it; it is about reproducing families and also about the science. Canadians have a lack of understanding of the exact dynamics of this piece of legislation. We should look at that and weigh it very carefully.
To bring the bill back in its present form would scare me and Canadians. The bill needs to be amended. It was in the health committee prior to prorogation. If it were to be reintroduced it would come back to committee. At that stage we should be open to some of the amendments that Canadians feel are very important for this piece of very delicate legislation.
The Alliance supports some aspects of the bill. Some of the things in it are actually very good. We support the banning of human and therapeutic cloning, chimera, animal-human hybrids, sex selection, germ line alterations, buying and selling of embryos, paid surrogacies. They are all part of this legislation.
One of the things that is not in the legislation and one that is very important for us to consider is the banning of the patenting of human life. This is something the government needs to deal with. I was looking for an indication in the throne speech on that as well. Are we going to ban human life or are we going to allow life at its most vulnerable to be patented?
When we sit back and think about it, why would we want to patent human life? It would be for no other reason than to protect the individual who discovered it because of an economic value. Patentability is usually based on that. If it is all about economics and it is all about dollars and cents and making a commodity of human life, that is something we should be very careful of.
We are very concerned about this legislation in many other areas. One is the accountability of the agency that would be struck which is talked about in the legislation. To be able to go forward in the 21st century we need an agency that will deal with the very delicate things that are in the bill regarding scientific advancements, some of which we cannot even talk about now because we do not know what they will be, but as we go into the 21st century we know that they are going to be there.
We need an agency that is very strong, independent, transparent, and also which is accountable not only to the Minister of Health but to Parliament. The agency should be an independent agency outside Health Canada. Clause 25 in the legislation is quite disturbing. It allows the minister to give any policy direction that she likes to the agency and the agency has no choice but to follow it. That is not accountability. We need an independent agency that answers to Parliament. That sort of direction would be very difficult for the minister to direct.
The performance of the agency should also be evaluated by the Auditor General, not by itself. The legislation says that the agency will monitor itself. There is nothing in the bill saying that the agency will have to report on an annual basis to the House at all, which is something else that is quite disturbing.
The bill also allows for the creation of advisory panels. We believe that stakeholders in this important area should have been given statutory standing. That statutory standing should be before the agency. We are talking about more than just being driven by scientists. It should be a group that has a broader scope than that.
The users and the children who are born from assisted reproductive technologies should be part of that group. People with disabilities should be part of that group. Scientists and the medical community should be part of it. The faith community, the private providers, research firms, taxpayers and their representatives in the provinces and territories should also have a voice. They should have statutory standing if it is going to have a broad enough scope and if it is going to garner the confidence of the nation as an agency that will move forward in this area.
I was surprised to find that there was no reporting in the bill. As I said before, the agency does not have to report annually to Parliament. That is something that needs to be there for sure.
The agency is going to be called upon to do many things, whether it is to decide upon the number of embryos that are created or destroyed or provide ongoing assisted reproduction procedures. It needs to report on all of those things and it should all be part of that report.
We also have to understand that this agency and this piece of legislation have to work in concert with the provincial governments. Some governments, such as the province of Quebec, are saying that they will not allow embryonic stem cell research in their provinces. What happens under this piece of legislation then? Who calls the shots? Is it the federal government in this piece of legislation, or is it provincial jurisdiction that has the mandate to deal with this area within its facilities?
These are things that concern us about this flawed piece of legislation. When we look at the ethics of this, it is something that is very disturbing to many Canadians.
On one side we have people who will say that embryonic stem cell research is something that could create a cure for their children or for their loved ones. We know that they will stop at nothing to do that. As parents we would lay down our lives easily for our children if we could keep them alive and healthy. It is something that is within us to do.
On the other side of it, there could be embryos created for the purpose of reproduction that would be destroyed. There could be others who would look at that and say “These are my children and I will stand in the way of this legislation to protect those children”.
I understand both sides, and both sides are very right in their dynamics. It is a very explosive piece of legislation and we should think very carefully before we bring it back in its present state.