Bill C-13 (Historical)

Assisted Human Reproduction Act

An Act respecting assisted human reproduction

Assisted Human Reproduction Act

[Loyola Hearn, Progressive Conservative, St. John's West, NL]

moved:

Motion No. 11

That Bill C-13, in Clause 3, be amended by replacing line 14 on page 4 with the following:

““Minister” means the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada.”

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity finally to address long overdue legislation in the House on a clause by clause basis. I totally agree with my colleague from the Bloc who outlined the incredible importance attached to the legislation and the need for urgent action.

Given the incidence and reports of developments pertaining to human cloning over the past month, particularly in the context of the Raelian example, there is no question that we are compelled to act as urgently and as quickly as possible. Whether there is truth to that organization, whether the incident of human cloning happened, we know that science is progressing rapidly and that the possibilities of an actual cloning of a human being is real and could be taking place as we speak.

It is imperative that we have legislation that clearly reflects the views of Canadians and the hard work of parliamentarians over a decade on this matter and assert as quickly as possible a complete prohibition on human cloning. I believe there is general support, perhaps unanimous agreement in this chamber for that. The question though for all of us is why has taken so long to get to this point and why, as we begin the serious issue of clause by clause analysis of the bill and address a number of amendments at report stage, has the government continued to mire us down in details in terms of its own particular opposition to the hard work of members of the health committee over a long period of time.

What is so critical today is that we are beginning a process of receiving a number of amendments, some of which were made in the spirit of constructive amendment and improvement to the bill. Some though, as members will note, were proposed by the government of the day and the Minister of Health to negate the good work of the committee.

The obstacles that the government has put in the place of parliamentarians concerned about the issue have been extraordinary over the past year or more. The committee spent a great deal of work studying draft legislation and made a very comprehensive report to the government for improvements to that draft legislation, some of which were included and many of which were totally ignored. It was then in the process of clause by clause analysis of Bill C-13 by members of the health committee that we were able to reinstate some of those good recommendations to make positive changes. Lo and behold we now find that the government of the day is coming forward with amendments to negate the good work of the committee.

At every stage of the process the work that was done by members of parliament to ensure that we had the best possible legislation, acknowledging that there was some give and take required and some need to include a wide variety of views to reach a position of consensus, the government ignored all that.

At the outset, we are in January 2003 looking at, exactly one decade since the Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technologies, the Baird commission as we all know it in the House. For 10 years we have been grappling with the issue. The government for 10 years has ignored the suggestions of the women's movement, of people committed to action in this area and to the broad community that wants to see the government put in place a strong regulatory framework to ensure that women are protected, that the offspring of reproductive technologies are ensured of full protection under the law and that we have a mechanism in place to protect the health and safety of Canadians as new and future developments occur in our society today.

We have raised a number of concerns from day one around the process and today we still are concerned because of the failure of the government to respect the wishes of the committee and to include some very positive suggestions. Our concerns have focussed around four or five areas and in all areas we remain unconvinced that the government has addressed those concerns to the fullest extent possible.

We have raised concerns about health protection because we knew that women involved in reproductive technologies ought to be assured at every step of the way that the drugs and treatments they took would be safe beyond a reasonable doubt. Based on testimony and expert witnesses before our committee, we know that women must have access to independent information and counselling at critical times when they may be vulnerable to pressure from promoters of technologies that may put them at risk. We will see through the course of this consideration of the bill at report stage that all those concerns have not been fully addressed.

We remain concerned about commercialization in this sector. We know that much of reproductive technology remains the private preserve of giant life sciences and drug corporations with patent protection taking precedence over the public good and with private for profit interests dominating the field of reproductive technology. The health committee of Parliament recommended to the government that in the context of the bill it review and amend the Patent Act to ensure that the genes and genetic sequencing developments that were part of the human body were not matters for intellectual property rights and for profit of giant life sciences corporations.

Another concern relates to the off-loading of key policy decisions to an agency. At the committee members worked very hard to ensure that this new agency, to be enacted with the proclamation of this legislation, would be constituted to ensure that there was no possibility of conflict of interest and to ensure that the board reflected the concerns of Canadians, particularly women who were most directly affected by this legislation.

As we proceed through this report stage process, members will see that the government has ignored many of the very good suggestions made with respect to ensuring that the agency is not a toothless wonder or an arm of the government, but is an independent body able to do the necessary work required.

We also have raised very serious concerns about the need for us as a health committee and the Parliament of Canada to reflect the fact that we have a diverse society and that we ought to acknowledge that people live with disabilities and that those people can lead full and satisfying lives. Our committee recommended that one of the proclamatory statements in the bill include reference to the fact that people living with disabilities ought to be referenced in the bill. It should be said that persons living with disabilities can lead full and satisfying lives and enrich the lives of those around them. That was taken out of the bill by the government of the day. Regrettably, an amendment which I proposed to assert that idea at this final stage of Bill C-13 was ruled out of order.

I regret that situation but want to say that as a Parliament we must address the concerns of organizations and individuals dealing with issues of importance to people with disabilities. We must ensure that those concerns are reflected in this bill, that we have an appropriate response to the issue of eugenics and that we work as hard as we can to develop a national strategy to protect individuals from the negative consequences of eugenics. We must ensure that people from all backgrounds, with all different abilities, are respected and their contributions acknowledged to the work we do today.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

moved:

Motion No. 5

That Bill C-13, in Clause 3, be amended by replacing lines 25 to 28 on page 2 with the following:

“introduced;

(b) an embryo that consists of cells of more than one embryo, foetus or human being; or

(c) a non-human embryo into which any cell of a human embryo, human foetus or human being has been introduced.”

Motion No. 7

That Bill C-13, in Clause 3, be amended by replacing lines 40 and 41 on page 2 with the following:

“(b) in relation to an in vitro embryo, the original gamete providers and the embryo provider who created the embryo.”

Motion No. 9

That Bill C-13, in Clause 3, be amended by replacing line 3 on page 3 with the following:

“purpose of creating a human being, and further includes polyspermic embryos.”

Motion No. 10

That Bill C-13, in Clause 3, be amended by adding after line 33 on page 3 the following:

““human genome” means the totality of the deoxyribonucleic acid sequence of the human species.”

[Maurice Vellacott, Canadian Alliance, Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, SK]

moved:

Motion No. 4

That Bill C-13, in Clause 2, be amended by deleting lines 1 to 4 on page 2.

[David Kilgour, Liberal, for the Minister of Health]

moved:

Motion No. 1

That Bill C-13 be amended by replacing the long title with the following:

“An Act respecting assisted human reproduction and related research”

Motion No. 2

That Bill C-13, in Clause 2, be amended by replacing, in the English version, line 15 on page 1 with the following:

“individuals, for families and for society in”

[The Speaker]

There are 107 motions in amendment standing on the Notice Paper for the report stage of Bill C-13.

Motion No. 102 will not be selected by the Chair as it was ruled out of order in committee.

Motions Nos. 12, 34, 35, 37, 54, 56, 58, 67, 70, 87 and 107 will not be selected by the Chair because they could have been proposed in committee.

Motions Nos. 3, 8, 15, 25, 31, 38, 41 to 43, 48, 50, 57, 59, 60, 62, 63, 65, 66, 68, 69, 73, 79, 97 and 101 will not be selected by the Chair because they were lost in committee.

Motions Nos. 9, 76 and 91 will not be selected by the Chair because they were proposed in committee and withdrawn.

In my statement of March 21, 2001, concerning the new guidelines for report stage, I mentioned that the reasons for non-selection of amendments will not routinely be provided by the Chair. However, today I would like to expand on this approach and share the reasoning that I have used for certain motions from the hon. member for Mississauga South.

The Chair notes that the member for Mississauga South attended the clause by clause meetings of the Standing Committee on Health but was not an official member of the committee. Furthermore, the member contends he was not able to have his amendments proposed by any official member of the committee.

Of course, the Chair recognizes that our parliamentary system is party driven and that the positions of parties are brought forward to committees through its officially designated members. The Chair also recognizes that some members may want to act on their own.

The Chair has examined the note to Standing Order 76.1(5), which reads in part,

The Speaker will normally only select motions that... or could not be presented in committee.

Consequently, the Chair is of the opinion that certain motions by the hon. member for Mississauga could not be presented during the clause by clause study in committee and should therefore be studied at the report stage.

All remaining motions have been examined and the Chair is satisfied that they meet the guidelines expressed in the note to Standing Order 76.1(5) regarding the selection of motions and amendments at the report stage.

The motions will be grouped for debate as follows:

Group No. 1: Motions Nos. 1, 2, 4, 5, 7 and 9 to 11.

Group No. 2: Motions Nos. 13, 14, 16 to 18, 20 to 24, 26 to 30, 32, 33, 36, 39, 40, 44 to 47, 49, 51 and 95.

Group No. 3: Motions Nos. 52, 53, 55, 61, 64, 71, 72, 74, 75, 77 and 78.

Group No. 4: Motions Nos. 6, 80 to 86 and 88 to 90.

Group No. 5: Motions Nos. 2 to 94, 96, 98 to 100 and 103 to 106.

The voting patterns for the motions within each group are available at the Table. The Chair will remind the House of each pattern at the time of voting.

I shall now propose Motions Nos. 1, 2, 4, 5, 7 and 9 to 11 in Group No. 1 to the House.

Points of Order

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Minister of State and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, while being totally happy about the continuing support we will be getting from the opposition for our legislation, let me indicate to the House the legislative program for the following days.

This afternoon we will continue the consideration of Bill C-20, the child protection legislation. If and when this is completed, we will then turn to Bill C-19, the first nations' fiscal bill in the name of the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development.

Tomorrow we will commence report stage of Bill C-13, the reproductive technologies legislation. On Wednesday we will call report stage of Bill C-6, the specific claims bill. On Thursday we will resume consideration of legislation not completed and add to the agenda Bill C-22, the family law bill. On Friday, my present plans are to call Bill C-3 respecting the Canada pension plan.

Consultations have taken place between the parties. I believe that you will find unanimous consent for the following motion that I would now like to move for a take note debate.

I move:

That, Wednesday, January 29, 2003, a debate pursuant to Standing Order 53.1 shall take place concerning the situation in Iraq and, that after 9:00 p.m. on the said day, the Chair shall not receive any dilatory motions or quorum calls.

Government of Canada

[Don Boudria, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Mr. Speaker, not only have we had six days of debate on the throne speech, we have had: the successful Kyoto resolution, which was adopted by the other place yesterday, I might add; the implementation of the Prime Minister's ethics package, by a draft bill, of the independent ethics commissioner; a code of conduct for parliamentarians; the Romanow commission report; the passing of Bill C-8 on pest control; the passing of Bill C-13 on human reproduction, as we did yesterday; and the Species at Risk Act having royal assent.

Mr. Speaker, no doubt you will recognize a supplementary so I can add to this.

Health

[Bonnie Brown, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, members should know by now that the standing committee's first responsibility is to review legislation sent to it by the House. We did that, and this morning I reported on Bill C-13. It might have been faster, except for the obstructionist tactics employed by the Alliance members during clause by clause.

In addition to that, three times in the last two weeks Alliance members asked the committee not to meet due to social events they had to attend. Once again they want to have it both ways. It cannot be done.

Prebudget Consultations

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, since this may be my last opportunity to speak in the House before rising for the Christmas break, I want to give you my best wishes for the holiday season. I also want to say a special thank you to everyone who has made our jobs easier this past session: the table officers, the pages, the interpreters, the security personnel, the messengers, the food providers and everyone who made it possible for us to do our jobs.

Those thanks are particularly in order since this has been such a raucous session, with so many uncertainties about the legislative agenda of the government and with so much division and conflict around deepening scandals and information about fiscal mismanagement.

We have expressed in the past and we will again today our concern with the government's ability to manage fiscally and to provide a meaningful legislative agenda for Parliament and for the country. To use an old expression, I think it can be said that the debates this session have been a bit like the mating of pandas. There has been a lot of commotion but not much has happened.

It is very important, in this period of prebudgetary consultations, that we discuss the question of accountability and transparency. It is very hard to give concrete suggestions around budgetary alternatives if we know before we even start that so many of our recommendations will be disregarded, and where there are so many questions and doubts about how the government is actually spending the money that we authorized in the Chamber in the past.

In the last few weeks we have had ample evidence from the Auditor General, through the media and from other sources indicating that the government is suffering from three phenomena that are very worrisome.

First, there is clearly a culture of secrecy that runs rampant through the government.

Second, there is an arrogance of power that makes the government believe it can keep important decisions away from Parliament.

Third, there also is evidence of rotten management of public funds, of taxpayer dollars, whether we are talking about the Auditor General's revelations with respect to the billion dollar gun registry; or we are talking about the billion dollars plus in terms of GST fraud; or we are talking about the Auditor General's revelations pertaining to the corporate use of tax havens, which has cost millions of dollars; or we are talking about the recent news of a $20 million expenditure to build a refugee jail or a fortress for people coming into Canada seeking immigration status or refugee asylum.

Example after example reveal that the government is secretive, unaccountable to the public and disrespectful of Parliament.

I hope, as we lead up to the process of the next budget, the government will take those concerns very seriously, start acting on those concerns and will truly try to find ways to become accountable to Parliament and transparent with the public.

The Auditor General made a suggestion that the problems were not all a result of government mismanagement, that MPs themselves were derelict in their duties in terms of active scrutiny of government expenditures. I think the Auditor General has a point but only to a certain extent. That argument only holds true if members of Parliament and the committees of the House are given the opportunity and the information to adequately scrutinize government expenditures.

I know of numerous standing committees of the House that were not given the opportunity to scrutinize the supplementary estimates. As per our rules, those estimates were deemed accepted and approved even though there was no debate and no scrutiny by the many committees.

That is not a problem of individual members of Parliament. That is a result of a government that wields authority throughout this place and which has very cleverly managed to ensure that by controlling the membership and the actions of its own members on committees it makes it impossible for us to do our jobs.

I want to say that was absolutely the case in terms of both the health committee and the immigration committee, two committees of which I am a part. Neither of those committees studied the supplementary estimates and therefore no recommendations are coming forward, even though we are talking about two large areas of government expenditure and two areas where there are questionable practices on the part of government.

I will reference the health committee. This is a committee that ought to be having a say in this prebudgetary period and ought to be discussing the implications of the royal commission by Roy Romanow on the future of health care, and yet our committee adjourned yesterday immediately upon completing the study of Bill C-13. No attempt was made to schedule meetings pertaining to Romanow, despite a motion being passed at that committee to do just that.

We did not have a chance to scrutinize the department's budgets, even though we heard, through media sources and community activists, that the government was up to some dubious practices. I want to reference for the benefit of the House some evidence suggesting that the Minister of Health is planning to raid tobacco control funding to pay for other health initiatives. It would appear that the Minister of Health is preparing to take $13 million out of the anti-smoking initiative and putting it, as we understand it, into her study on obesity to meet her requirements to study the issue of obesity in Canada today.

No scrutiny in this place occurred around those initiatives. I would suggest that the problem rests with the secrecy and manipulation of the government and not with the integrity and hard work of individual members of Parliament on all sides of the House.

I also want to reference the immigration committee where we also did not deal with the supplementary estimates. We learned through the media that the government has proceeded with tendering for a contract worth $20 million to build a detention centre in the vicinity of Pearson airport. The detention centre has specifications that appear to make it a fortress and a jail for refugees, not a low risk security centre.

At the same time that we hear of the government proceeding with that with no accountability to our committee, we know the minister of immigration is saying that he does not have the money, the courage or whatever to implement the refugee appeal division aspects of the immigration and refugee legislation passed by the House. We have legislation passed by the House and the minister says that he cannot proclaim parts of the bill to ensure due process and rights for refugees because he does not have the money, yet he has the money for a prison for refugees.

It also should be noted that there are many areas where the immigration minister should be spending money to ensure family reunification in this country but he has failed to do that. I want to reference in particular the fact that the immigration department has tremendous backlogs in many areas, particularly in terms of family reunification and sponsorship of spouses. We know that the waiting time for just basic acknowledgment and initial approval used to be 90 days. It is now well over eight months or even up to a year.

Here we are talking about prebudgetary consultations when the government is not prepared to be forthcoming. It is ignoring the wishes of Parliament.

Finally, with respect to health care, it is clear that the government has the resources, the latitude and the will of Canadians to move forward with the expenditures recommended by Roy Romanow. We are talking about a reasonable proposal that will ensure stability in our system. It will give the kind of involvement by the federal government to ensure that the provinces and the federal government can participate on a cooperative basis for the future.

I would suggest that the government has no legitimacy in suggesting that the cupboard is bare and that it cannot address the number one priority of Canadians. I would suggest to the government that it commit today to including in the next budget the expenditures recommended by Romanow so we can ensure a sustainable future for medicare.

Committees of the House

[Bonnie Brown, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to present, in both official languages, the first report of the Standing Committee on Health.

Pursuant to its order of reference dated Wednesday, October 9, 2002, the health committee has considered Bill C-13, an act respecting assisted human reproduction. The committee agreed on Tuesday, December 10, 2002, to report it with amendment.

I wish to thank the members, the witnesses and the staff who assisted us through these deliberations.

Criminal Code

[Jeannot Castonguay, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Mr. Speaker, along the line of what I was saying earlier, when I talked about Bill C-13, which my hon. colleague is very familiar with, I think this is another bill that reinforces existing measures, while perhaps still allowing people to slip through the cracks.

We must realize that no matter how many laws we have, there will always be people who manage to skirt around them. Obviously, if we have bills that at least allow us to penalize these people when we catch them, hopefully this will improve the situation.

Again, I am convinced that we are heading in the right direction with Bill C-13, which will be debated in the House shortly, and I am very happy with my hon. colleague's participation in this debate.

Business of the House

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Madam Speaker, the member is also very knowledgeable. He has been on this file since the very beginning. Maybe Canadians do not know but he knows that the United States already wrestled with this one. With an election of presidents, the position of the U.S. government changed from President Clinton to President Bush. Individually, they have different views.

The current position of the United States of America with regard to the embryonic stem cell research is that there will be no more killing of embryos, no more killing of human beings. However, it did allow researchers to get public funding for the purposes of purchasing pre-existing stem cell lines that had been harvested from embryos prior to it coming to its position. It identified that there were some 14 cell lines around the world that were available. Oddly enough, I was very much surprised to find that the cost of a vial of stem cells was only $3,000. If people can get what they want by purchasing vials of embryonic stem cells to do their research, that raises some question about why they would even want to go through the hassle of establishing an agency or the regulatory framework to ensure that there is this control.

The member also mentioned the U.K. Last night I printed off its bill. It actually had its genesis back in 1990, and there have been amendments since. I looked specifically at schedule 3, an excellent schedule on informed consent. In fact Dr. Françoise Baylis recommended that we should have a similar schedule 3 in Bill C-13 to deal with the complicated issues related to what consists of informed consent, when that occurs, et cetera, and the implications.

We definitely have to apprise ourselves of the work that has been done in other jurisdictions. We do not want to have to reinvent the wheel but we want to make it consistent with the intent of the legislation and compatible with the laws of the land, as they are a combination of federal and provincial laws and regulations. Respect for the jurisdictional aspect is extremely important.

We have asked at committee that a representative of the Government of Quebec, we were hoping either the minister of justice or the minister of health and social services, be invited to come to committee to help us to better understand the Quebec position. We know that Quebec was very quick to review the matter and to give its preliminary view. I understand its first step was to ban embryonic stem cell research outright. Subsequently I understand it is open to following the CIHR guidelines on it, but I am not sure.

We will see some other things happening too. Dr. Leon Kass is the head of President Bush's advisory council on biomedical research. Dr. Kass is eminently qualified and highly respected in the field. He is on record as recognizing that human life begins at conception as an undisputed biological fact.

The President has specifically asked Dr. Kass and his advisory committee to pursue as vigorously as possible research related to the storage of ova, women's eggs, so that there would not be any surplus embryos from IVF and this entire debate on the ethical level could be dispelled.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Works and Government Services]

Madam Speaker, as you know, this matter does not fall under my minister's portfolio but it is one in which I have played an active role in by informing myself about Bill C-13 and some of its important provisions.

The member who has just spoken has moved a motion in the House that would call on the Standing Committee on Health, which is presently studying Bill C-13, an act on reproductive technologies, assisted human reproduction, to have the bill split in two so that it can deal with matters related to the criminalization of practices such as cloning and have that handled in a separate bill.

I believe that the motion is relevant. This is a very, very complex bill. It is a bill that in fact has its genesis in a royal commission from at least 10 years ago. The response of the public to it, certainly with regard to certain aspects, for instance cloning, I think was fairly definitive, but the science was evolving with a rapidity that the public was not able to really be fully aware of.

There was an attempt in 1997, I believe, to have a bill that responded to the royal commission. It did not get through the legislative process before the subsequent election. It was not until this Parliament that a legislative effort actually came forward.

It is interesting that after a number of years of having a royal commission, of certainly many people having advocacy positions with regard to reproductive technologies, both with regard to prohibitions and support for other aspects of reproductive technologies, the then minister of health came forward with a draft bill. That draft bill went through second reading here and to committee, where over 100 witnesses were heard on a variety of aspects. That is very significant. Hearing 100 or more witnesses on a bill indicates that it is not an insignificant bill.

I have to credit the committee with having prepared one of the most comprehensive, thoughtful and constructive reports of a standing committee, and on a very tough bill. That report was tabled in the House in December 2001. The response of the then minister of health was to not address specifically the 34 recommendations of this report on the draft legislation. In fact, on the last day on which it was possible for the minister to respond, the minister, and I believe it was on May 9 of this year, tabled Bill C-56 in response to the draft report.

There have been changes made between the draft bill and this one. One of the things I noticed was that in many of the clauses there was this standard phrase, for instance, “this is prohibited”, and then “unless otherwise provided for in the regulations”. If we were to look at this bill we would find that reference to the regulations spread throughout the entire bill, to the extent that I am not entirely comfortable that I know what the bill stands for in all regards and what I would be voting on if I were to vote for the bill, because I will not see the regulations until after the bill is passed and receives royal assent. This is backwards. I would like to see the regulations before the bill is passed.

I believe the relevance here is that the member has raised an issue with regard to jurisdiction. It is an issue, particularly with regard to criminalization related to the prohibitions. It is a relevant question and has been argued by others back at the beginning of the debate on Bill C-56, which transformed itself into Bill C-13 after prorogation.

There were calls for the bill to be split between the reproductive technologies part, i.e. cloning, genetic alterations, surrogacy issues, et cetera, and another part which dealt with issues, such as the restrictive use of stem cells from embryos for research purposes, a very difficult issue for many Canadians because of the ethical implications.

This particular bill, as the mover of the motion laid out, includes provisions whereby if provinces have existing legislation and regulations in place that address elements of the proposed bill, Bill C-13, that with consultations and negotiations the provincial legislation or regulations would be the relevant or the operative jurisdiction on those matters where there was an agreement. Therefore there are these kinds of provisions in there.

It is a rare case where federal jurisdiction and federal law would be seconded to a province. At any point in time we can imagine what would happen if there was a case before the courts and somebody asked what the federal law said on it. The federal would say “This you cannot do, blah, blah, blah”. However it is subject to whether or not there is an equivalency agreement. The fine line of the law being what it is, the interpretation of whether or not there was an offence, criminal or otherwise, could be very fine. Therefore a significant effort would have to be made to ensure that should there in fact be any equivalency agreements, that those clearly reflect the legislative intent of the federal legislation.

The member who moved the motion did not mention it specifically but I thought it was interesting to note that the Quebec minister of, I believe, health and social services announced very quickly after the bill was tabled in the House that the province of Quebec would be banning the utilization of embryos for harvesting stem cells; in fact banning embryonic stem cell research outright. The words he used were “It is forbidden”. I remember reading that in the press article.

While all this is going on, we have a group called the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. It came forward with an interesting set of guidelines. It is the funding agency for publicly funded research in Canada, including things on embryonic stem cell research, and it has laid out the guidelines and the criteria under which they would permit such research.

That was quite controversial to this place and certainly to the health committee because those guidelines were developed and it was announced that they would be in place almost immediately at the same time as the committee was in the middle of dealing with Bill C-56, the legislation on precisely that issue. The controversy was that we now had another jurisdiction.

This agency was set up by the Government of Canada. It transferred funds to publicly funded research projects. I believe it was formerly called the Medical Research Council and is now called the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. It even brings more relevance to the question of whether or not there is a jurisdictional problem here, because it is not just the federal government and provincial governments, it is also funding agencies, et cetera. Our bill right now, I believe, but I do not have my papers with me, seems to take the approach that this is the law but if the law is silent on some aspect then that other aspect still comes into play. I am thinking of the tri-council policy statement that permits research on embryos up to 14 days. We know that is in there.

What I do not believe is fully covered in the bill is the element of education and training and whether or not all of the provisions with regard to the safeguards, controls, consent, et cetera, with regard to donations of gametes or embryos for education and research purposes, are fully articulated in the current bill. I think we may want to consider whether there has to be some amendments. That is another jurisdiction.

The tri-council policy is basically the recognized leader or association of all researchers that makes pronouncements and provides guidelines for all research.

We have the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the tri-council policy statement and the provinces all having the opportunity to establish equivalency agreements and negotiate those with the governments, and then we maybe have another dimension that enters into this and that is the disciplines.

The Canadian Bar Association, which appeared before the health committee yesterday, said that it had a problem with criminalizing prohibitive behaviour. If a person makes a clone that is prohibited by this law should the person be treated as a criminal and penalized as a criminal? Bill C-13 says, yes. The Canadian Bar Association says, no. Other representatives of the medical research community obviously have come to us and said, no.

Now we have, not necessarily a formal jurisdiction, but certainly an industry, that being the lawyers, doctors, researchers and whoever else, having a problem with jurisdiction. I do not know how they will fight their cases if every province will be able to establish their own rules and require respect for their laws, practices and regulations, which will be incorporated, I guess by reference, in this legislation.

Now we are getting complicated. This now is a multidimensional problem. The member therefore has raised a quite straightforward motion, the implications of which are enormous. They are enormous because if we open up this matter with regard to the criminalization issue we must necessarily open up the matter with regard to splitting the bill between reproductive technologies and related research.

Eighty-five per cent of the bill is acceptable to Canadians and to the House. There was such a strong consensus on the bill, which deals with cloning, genetic alteration, surrogacy for profit, et cetera, all in line with what the health committee report on the draft legislation laid out, that today the legislation would have been passed.

However, it is not passed today and there is one reason and one reason only, and that is because the bill incorporated the whole aspect of related research.

I understand that research using embryos is an activity and that those embryos have to come from somewhere. Where they come from and prescribed to come from under the act is embryos which are surplus or left over after the process of in vitro fertilization, test tube babies.

The only linkage to this bill is the fact that those embryos are surplus to an IVF process. The IVF process is part of the reproductive technologies bill. It is a very small linkage. This whole area of embryo related research, education and training, finding therapies and cures for Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, multiple sclerosis, cancer and diabetes, is a wonderful science. I know of no one in Canada who is opposed to stem cell research because stem cells occur naturally in the human body. Every organ in the human body has stem cells. They also occur in placentas, umbilical cords, umbilical cord blood, aborted fetuses, as well as in embryos. The only linkage of related research in Bill C-13 is the fact that embryos from the IVF process will be used in the research, and the IVF process is linked to reproductive technologies.

A perfect argument would be to say that we should split the bill and take the reproductive technologies as one bill. Eighty-five per cent of the substance of this bill is acceptable to Canadians and to the House, party by party. It could be passed immediately and put into law. We could then ban cloning and genetic alteration in Canada. We would be able to deal with surrogacy for profit in Canada. We could have done this a year ago but the bill included related research. Now we have a problem.

If we look at the volume of the bill, we see that only about 50% of the pages are on reproductive technologies. The rest of the bill sets up an agency. We are going to set up an agency with a full time chair and representatives from all disciplines and provinces, part time people, and their responsibility will be to license fertility clinics and researchers. We are going to set up a bureaucracy.

On top of that, and I will not talk about it in any detail but I will just raise it, when we deal with research we are dealing with commercialization issues, and money gets made. Things like generic drugs versus brand names, the patent process and the legal issues of informed consent really start to come in on the related research.

When we look at this, the provisions to establish this agency are enormous. After the bill gets royal assent, which I expect might be in a year from now, it will take an additional two years to establish this agency and the related regulations. We are two and a half years away from having laws on the books to ban cloning. Shame.

I would argue, just as did the member who moved this motion, that we should split this bill and get the related technologies out of it. If it is going to take that long to come up with regulations to figure out how to deal with this, why not spend the time to look at this carefully, but let us get legislation on the books banning cloning, banning genetic alteration, and dealing with surrogacy for profit. Let us get those other prohibitions on there and the other controlled activities. It has nothing to do with embryonic stem cells. It has to do with the fact that Canada does not today have any legislation whatsoever dealing with matters such as cloning. We are one of the 128 countries in the world that does not even have legislation on these important matters.

We could have that legislation immediately. All it would take is to split the bill. I could make that argument just as well as the hon. member from the Bloc who moved this motion to split it. With regard to jurisdictional issues it is tremendously complex.

It has taken a long time to deal with the bill. I suspect it will take a lot longer. I know that members are very concerned about this issue. Certainly there are ethical issues that are involved which are not universal.

Canadians must be heard. We must respect the due process of the legislative process. If it means that we have to have a vacuum in our legislation on matters such as cloning, because we have put things in there which perhaps should not have been there to make an efficient disposition of legislation, there is always time for common sense to prevail.

[Rob Merrifield, Canadian Alliance, Yellowhead, AB]

Madam Speaker, I certainly appreciate the opportunity to ask a question on this matter. It is a very important issue. I am sure that at the root of my colleague's concern is the impact Bill C-13 would have on some provinces.

I understand that Quebec is very concerned about embryonic stem cell research. In fact some dialogue has taken place as to whether Quebec will allow embryonic stem cell research to be done there. I applaud Quebec for that. I think it is a progressive move, one that is ahead of many other areas in the country.

However, the piece of legislation has an equivalency agreement contained within it. If it allows embryonic stem cell research, which will take precedence: the provinces or this piece of legislation?

I also wonder if my hon. colleague would speak to the reason why he wants this piece of legislation split, the appalling procedure of therapeutic and reproductive cloning? If his province feels so strongly about embryonic stem cell research, does it also feel the same about cloning? Is the idea that Quebec will not allow human cloning within the province on its books?

I am also a bit confused about this jurisdictional thing, because we are seeing from the provinces intense pressure on Bill C-13 and this area, reproductive cloning. I am a bit confused because my colleague, his party and his province seem less interested in provincial jurisdiction with regard to the impact of the Kyoto accord, which would have many more repercussions on his province than this bill would have.