Bill C-13 (Historical)

Assisted Human Reproduction Act

An Act respecting assisted human reproduction

An Act to amend the Criminal Code (cruelty to animals and firearms) and the Firearms Act

[John Reynolds, Canadian Alliance, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my point of order pertains to the motion to concur in the Senate's message respecting the vision of Bill C-10. I will also comment on the notice given by the government to curtail debate on the motion using Standing Order 78.

Mr. Speaker, as you are aware, both the Senate and the Commons have clearly established a difference between dividing bills and amending bills. It would be inconsistent not to apply the same logic and establish a difference between the Senate messages that amend bills and Senate messages that divide bills.

I will argue that the motion to concur in the message from the Senate regarding Bill C-10 cannot be considered a stage of a bill nor can the Senate's division of Bill C-10 be considered an amendment to Bill C-10.

Accordingly, the motion to concur in the Senate's message should not be listed on the Order Paper as a motion in response to an amendment made to a bill. It should properly placed on the Order Paper as a government motion. If you were to agree with my point of order, there are two consequences.

First, the notice given by the government to time allocate the motion in response to the Senate message is invalid since Standing Order 78 cannot be used to curtail debate on a government motion unrelated to the legislative process.

Second, the wording of the motion is incorrect. It is worded as a motion to concur in a message from the Senate regarding an amendment to a bill.

As was argued on December 5, 2002, the issue of the Senate dividing a Commons' bill was unprecedented.

We all assumed and accepted that this message seeking concurrence to divide Bill C-10 should be treated as an amendment made by the Senate. There are no other precedents regarding messages from the Senate dealing with legislation. If we had thought it through, we could have concluded that the division of a bill should not be treated as an amendment. Dividing a bill has never been considered an amendment and never should be.

The two most common messages that we receive from the Senate to which we are expected to respond are messages regarding amendments to legislation and messages regarding participation on joint committees.

A message regarding amendments made to legislation is treated as a stage of a bill. A motion pursuant to Standing Order 78 would, in that case, be in order to curtail debate.

A message regarding a committee, or any other business, would also be responded to by a motion. However the motion would be considered a run of the mill government motion and would be listed on the Order Paper accordingly.

Just because the Senate message is concerning legislation does not make it a stage or an amendment to a bill. Consider as examples the numerous House orders that are moved in regard to legislation. They are not treated as stages or as amendments to bills. Let us take a more specific and pertinent example such as the division of a bill.

At page 641 of Marleau and Montpetit, it states:

--the House may give the committee an instruction by way of motion which authorizes it to do what it otherwise could not do, such as, for example...dividing a bill into more than one bill....

A motion to instruct a committee to divide a bill stands alone from the legislation. It is a separate substantive proposition. It relates to the bill but is not a stage of the bill. The government could not use time allocation to curtail debate on such a motion.

On the Order Paper we have a motion instructing the health committee to divide Bill C-13. It was moved on November 22, 2002 by the member for Hochelaga—Maisonneuve. It reads:

That it be an instruction to the Standing Committee on Health that they have power to divide Bill C-13, an act respecting assisted human reproduction, into two bills in order to deal with all matters related to the criminalization of practices such as cloning in another bill.

As you are aware, Bill C-13 has advanced beyond committee stage and the consideration of this motion is of no consequence to the legislative process of Bill C-13. If it were considered an amendment it would have to be disposed of first before advancing Bill C-13 any further.

If dividing a bill is not considered a stage or an amendment, then how can we consider as an amendment the motion concurring in the message from the Senate advising the House that the Senate has divided Bill C-10 into Bill C-10A and Bill C-10B.

The Senate itself did not consider the procedure to divide Bill C-10 as an amendment. The motion concerning the division of Bill C-13 is not considered an amendment in the House either. If that is the case, why are we treating the message from the Senate regarding the division of a bill as we would treat a message from the Senate regarding an amendment to a bill?

The motion to concur with the Senate should be listed under “Government Business” in the Order Paper with the other government business alongside the adjourned motion of the member for Hochelaga—Maisonneuve regarding the division of Bill C-13.

There was only one other precedent regarding the issue of the Senate dividing a Common's bill. On June 7, 1988, the Senate considered the matter of dividing Bill C-103, an act to increase opportunity for economic development in Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency and Enterprise Cape Breton Corporation. The issue on June 7 had to do with the fact that Bill C-103 was no longer on the Senate Order Paper but was superseded by two separate bills and that the chair had a problem accepting that the two separate bills were still government bills.

Mr. Speaker also said:

Senator Graham's instruction does not deal with amending a government bill, but with dividing a government bill into two bills.

The Speaker of course was correct. No one was arguing that it was an amendment. Everyone agreed that it was a separate motion adopted by the Senate. The issue was whether the Senate could adopt such a motion, not whether it was an amendment.

On July 11, 1988, the Speaker of the House of Commons ruled that the procedural event concerning Bill C-103 was totally without precedent. In his ruling on Bill C-103, the Speaker stated that he did not have the power to enforce the privileges of the House directly. He said that he could not rule the message from the Senate out of order for that would leave Bill C-103 in limbo. He said:

The cure in this case is for the House to claim its privileges or to forgo them....

I am not asking the Speaker to enforce the privileges of the House but to define what we are dealing with and have it worded properly and listed in the right place on the Order Paper. That would not leave Bill C-10 in limbo.

In the 1988 case the Speaker did not rule the statement made by the Senate Speaker was incorrect. I am referring to the statement that the division of a bill is not an amendment. It simply was not directly pertinent to the particular arguments put forward in the case of Bill C-103 and it was not a factor in the Speaker's ruling on Bill C-10.

The opinion of the Senate Speaker that dividing a bill is not an amendment has not been dismissed. It is accepted by both Houses that dividing a bill is not an amendment but, for some reason in the case of Bill C-10, the act of dividing a bill morphed into an amendment somewhere along the road from the Senate to the Commons.

As I said earlier, we did not know what else to do with such a message because, as Mr. Speaker stated in 1988, the procedural event concerning the division of a Commons bill by the Senate was totally without a precedent.

If we look at the message itself, it does not claim to be an amendment. The message was sent on December 4, 2002 and it is recorded in Journals as follows: “A message regarding C-10, an act to amend the Criminal Code (cruelty to animals and firearms) and the Firearms Act, was first received from the Senate as follows”:

Ordered, That the Clerk do carry this Bill back to the House of Commons and acquaint that House that the Senate has divided the Bill into two Bills, Bill C-10A, an act to amend the Criminal Code (firearms) and the Firearms Act, and Bill C-10B, an act to amend the Criminal Code (cruelty to animals), both of which are attached to this Message as Appendices “A”and “B” respectively; and

That the Clerk further acquaint that House that: (a) the Senate desires the concurrence of the House of Commons in the division of Bill C-10; (b) the Senate has passed Bill C-10A without amendment; and (c) the Senate is further considering Bill C-10B.

The message does not claim to be anything more than a message. The Journals Branch does not attempt to classify the message as anything other than a message either. It began its life on the Order Paper as an amendment after the government gave notice of its motion in response. Therefore it is the government's response to the message where things went wrong procedurally.

I suspect that the government regarded the message from the Senate as an amendment made to legislation because it had no other experience of messages from the Senate regarding legislation.

Even though the message represented an extraordinary procedural event, the government's response to that extraordinary event was to use a traditional response. The motion obviously came from a template that has been used countless times.

Beauchesne's 6th edition has a number of them in appendix 1. All one has to do is fill in the blanks. There are templates in appendix 1 regarding the proper wording for report stage motions; six month hoist motions and concurrence in Senate amendments. Template No. 74 reads as follows:

That the amendments made to Bill C-...., an act...., be now read a second time and concurred in; but that this House, while disapproving of any infraction of its privileges or rights by the other House, in this case waives its claims to insist upon such rights and privileges, but the waiver of said rights and privileges is not to be drawn into a precedent.

The government's motion regarding Bill C-10 and the template are almost identical. I am not knocking the government's use of templates. We all use them. In fact, the opposition amendment to the government's motion could be considered a template amendment to a template motion. While the use of the templates help keep us consistent, they cannot be used in response to an extraordinary and unprecedented procedural event. We are required to think a little harder under those circumstances.

While the template theory may explain why we considered another message from the Senate regarding the division of a bill inadvertently as a Senate amendment, sound procedural practice does not come from a good explanation of how a mistake was made. Sound practice comes from correcting those mistakes.

Just how material are those mistakes to my argument, or how material will they be when touted as precedence, will be included in the much anticipated opposing argument that I am sure the government House leader will present in a few moments.

The House never adopted a motion that concurred in the Senate's division of a House of Commons bill. The motion before us has not been adopted yet and the only other motion, the motion regarding Bill C-103 from 1988, disagreed with the Senate. The House has never accepted the division of a bill by the Senate to be an amendment. The House thus far has rejected the Senate's power to divide a House of Commons bill outright.

That is why it is so important for us to get this right before the government adopts the motion. I would urge the Speaker not to put much stock in mistakes of the past. I would urge the Speaker to consider instead the pure logic of the argument I am presenting today. There is no question the logic is in the Speaker's Chair. It always is and always has been.

Since both houses have clearly established a difference between dividing bills and amending bills, it would be consistent to apply that difference to our response to Senate messages that amend bills and Senate messages that divide bills. If the Speaker were to agree with my argument, there would be another issue regarding the wording of the motion. It reads:

That, in relation to the amendments made by the Senate to Bill C-10, An Act to amend the Criminal Code--

The reference to amendments is what I am concerned with. If the Speaker were to agree with my argument, would that not disqualify the motion since the motion would not make sense if it were determined that the division of a bill is not an amendment to a bill? The proper course of action would be to place motions in response to Senate messages regarding the division of House of Commons bills on the Order Paper as a government motions, and not as amendments. Motions in response to Senate messages regarding the division of House of Commons bills should either agree or disagree with what the Senate has done and should not masquerade as an amendment. Dividing a bill is not an amendment.

In preparing my argument I considered the following question: Would the adoption of a motion that addressed an action of the Senate that was not considered an amendment to a House of Commons bill satisfy the legislative process? In others words, must the communication between the House and the Senate regarding legislation be exclusively about amendments in order to satisfy the constitutional requirement that both houses pass the same bill?

I raised a point of order last spring regarding Bill C-10A. I argued that Bill C-10A should not be allowed to remain on the Order Paper because the bill lacked a procedural necessity to qualify it to exist, let alone proceed to the next stage. Bill C-10A was the offspring of Bill C-10 and was divided as a result of a separate substantive motion that instructed a committee. I attempted to convince the Speaker that since Bill C-10A had not been read a first time, nor had it been read a second time, it was not legitimately before the House.

On June 3, 2002, the Speaker ruled on the matter. He said:

However in the circumstances, given the House's explicit instructions to the committee to divide the bill and report it in two parts, like dividing things like the Red Sea, we do have to follow the instructions that the House gave. In my view the procedure adopted by the committee was the exact instruction the House gave, which was to divide the bill into two parts and report it accordingly.

It was an excellent ruling. It did not matter to the Speaker that the bill in question did not actually receive second reading. The Speaker was satisfied with the procedural standing and legislative course of Bill C-10A because it was established through the adoption of a motion by the House. He maintained this opinion even though the motion that established the existence of Bill C-10A was not considered a stage of the normal legislative process.

In the case of the motion to concur in the Senate's division of a House of Commons bill, the fact that the motion to concur is not considered a stage of the bill or an amendment is immaterial. The Speaker, in this case, would have to respect the decision of the House as he did with the division of the bill. The records would show that both houses were in agreement and that the constitutional requirement would have been met.

Mr. Speaker, my arguments have raised two questions which I hope, in your wisdom, will give us an answer because we must ensure we do things right for the future of parliaments in this great land. Can the motion be time allocated using Standing Order 78? Can the motion remain on the Order Paper as placed and as worded?

Until the Speaker rules on this point of order I would request that the Speaker refuse to allow the time allocation motion to be moved and defer any vote on the motion regarding the Senate message until this matter is resolved.

Petitions

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the final petition has to do with stem cells. It is quite appropriate on a day when we are debating Bill C-13.

The petitioners would like to draw to the attention of the House that Canadians do support ethical stem cell research, which has already shown encouraging potential and provides the cures and therapies necessary to deal with the illnesses and diseases of Canadians.

However they also point out that non-embryonic stem cells, also known as adult stem cells, have shown significant research progress without the immune rejection or ethical problems associated with embryonic stem cells.

The petitioners therefore call upon Parliament to pursue legislative initiatives which support adult stem cell research to find the cures and therapies necessary for the illnesses and diseases of Canadians.

Assisted Human Reproduction Act

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to take the opportunity to give an enormous amount of credit to the member for Nanaimo—Alberni for his contribution to Bill C-13. He spoke at every stage, he was active in committee, and he knows what he is talking about. My question relates to the structure of the bill. Being an omnibus bill, it does a lot of things.

I wonder if the member would care to comment on whether or not he believes that a bill which came forward and, very simply, banned the prohibited activities laid out in the bill, without a lot of complexity and linkages to the fertility clinics, researchers, agencies, et cetera, could pass quickly through the House and, in fact, have an in force date even sooner than would likely be the case with Bill C-13?

[James Lunney, Canadian Alliance, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

Mr. Speaker, again we are here with Bill C-13, a very important piece of legislation, probably one of the most important pieces of legislation that the House has considered to this point in the 37th Parliament. There are great implications for Canadians, for Canadian families and, because of difficulties with infertility, for men and women trying to produce babies .

The implications go far beyond that, which is why we have had such an interesting and prolonged debate. Again, to go back to the origin of the House dealing with this, the recommendation did come to the health committee from the minister, who asked us to look at draft legislation. The agenda has been ongoing since 1995 with the Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technologies. Canadians have been looking into this going back a long way and we have been waiting a long time for some response.

I want to refer to the committee work because it was a procedure that we felt was very commendable. In fact, rather than getting the legislation already in a legislative framework for debate, we received a recommendation from the minister as to the direction he felt it should take and he asked us to consult Canadians and to hear from witnesses and to come up with our version of how we should respond.

I want to refer to the committee's preamble. The committee entitled our work, “Assisted Human Reproduction: Building Families”. Under the framework at the beginning of our report, we established our priorities. The committee established three priorities to be used in appraising the individual components. There are many and varied components to this legislation, but these priorities flowed from the committee's view, from the views of committee members from all parties and all sides. We took this issue seriously.

The committee's view was that “the primary goal of assisted human reproduction is to build families” and therefore we focused on the potential effect of the draft legislation on three priority issues. The first was children. The committee took the view, and I think rightly, that the focus should be on children. Priority number one was that for children resulting from assisted human reproduction procedures, “The legislation must protect the physical and emotional health as well as the essential dignity of the children who are the intended and desired result of the procedures”. Our first priority was the children who will be produced.

The second priority was the adults participating in the reproductive procedures: “The legislation must protect the adults undergoing the procedures from potential negative physical, social and emotional effects”. In order to hyperovulate, women undergoing these procedures are often exposed to very caustic chemicals. In the process, there can be rather significant consequences for the women. We wanted to make sure that the people participating are also protected from negative physical, social and emotional effects.

Finally, there are the researchers and the physicians who conduct the research: “The legislation must oversee the experimental aspects of the...procedures while allowing selected procedures that might alleviate human suffering”.

These were our priorities: first, the children; second, the adults participating; and finally, the research community. We are concerned that the way in which the bill has developed has moved away from the committee's priorities and has taken on other priorities. I will address some of these concerns.

The member for Mississauga South has just pointed out some of the concerns we have in relation to the emphasis on stem cell research that will come out of this. Also, there is the issue related to anonymity of the donors as far as the children's needs being respected is concerned.

As well, there is the issue of industry in terms of the regulatory body that is to be set up to oversee this, a very important aspect of the bill. Members worked hard on this and it was the committee's view to make sure there was no conflict of interest in this important body that will govern this research. Unfortunately, amendments that would have tightened up the conflict of interest provisions were not supported in the House and in fact provide for, as the member for Mississauga South just alluded to, members from industry who have profits tied up in this industry and a great vested interest, perhaps, in being in a position to make decisions with that regulatory body.

I would just like to mention the overarching considerations of the committee that we felt were important to put in the preamble. One principle that we felt was overarching was “respect for human individuality, dignity and integrity”. We also felt that a “precautionary approach” was necessary “to protect and promote health”, and that “non-commodification and non-commercialization” were to be foundational issues. We are concerned that this is violated by the bill and that these interests have not been enforced. We felt also that informed choice is important, as well as accountability and transparency. I will just leave the committee report at this point, but those were the principles we wanted to address.

The bill addresses very important aspects that are important to all Canadians, at least those who are conversant with these issues, such as therapeutic cloning. Cloning of human beings is a topic of much discussion these days, as is germ line alteration, and these issues are addressed by the bill.

The member for Yellowhead, our health critic for the Canadian Alliance, moved an amendment the other day to which I will refer. It said:

That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following thereafter:

Bill C-13, an act respecting assisted human reproduction, be not now read a third time, but be referred back to the Standing Committee on Health for the purpose of reconsidering clause 18 with the view to allow children born through donor eggs or sperm to know the identity of their biological parents.

Just a moment ago, my colleague, the member for Nanaimo--Cowichan, stood in response to the member for Mississauga South and mentioned a young woman from Nanaimo. Her name is Olivia Pratten. She is a young woman who was one of the first offspring from assisted reproduction. She has been speaking on these issues since she was about 15.

This is not an issue of passing interest to Olivia Pratten. This issue has affected her life, the origin of her life, and it affects her to this day. I would like to make reference to her remarks to committee, because her voice needs to be heard, and frankly, the way the bill stands it has not considered this voice at this point. In fact, it has violated and works contrary to what Olivia is asking on behalf of the children produced by this technology. Olivia Pratten says that only donors who are willing to be identified to the child upon reaching their age of majority should be accepted as donors. Responsible, accountable and fully consenting donors: that is the standard that needs to be set by the medical establishment and the government that should be regulating them.

Sadly, the bill allows for anonymity of donors to continue. Anonymous donations allow for a college student to make repeated donations with a financial inducement.

I see that the member opposite is engaged with this. Maybe he thinks it is a good idea. I am not sure. We know that college students often need financial support, but we question whether this is the way they should be earning their way through college: by making a donation for which they get paid $65. That is not payment, according to those making the payment; it is compensation for expenses. For the student to come over to the clinic and make a donation of sperm, he is rewarded with $65, but he is not allowed to do this every day. No, he is only allowed to do this three times a week. That amounts to about $195 a week. We are talking about $800 a month. That is pretty good part time income. That is not income, by the way, but just compensation for his expenses.

This is commodification and commercialization. This is part of what we were concerned about as committee members. The committee was very clear in saying that men and women in Canada need to understand that their bodies are not for sale, that their reproductive capacities are not for sale. While we want to be compassionate and do everything we can to help those who are experiencing the great difficulties that go with fertility problems, we do not want to see people selling their bodies or their body parts. We do not do that with organ donations. We do not encourage Canadians to sell a kidney. We do not encourage the poor people in the country to receive a cash donation by giving up a kidney. Some countries do and in some countries they are not even compensated; the organs are just taken.

We do not want to encourage commodification of body parts in our country. Carrying on with Olivia's comments in committee, she said:

Simply put, the loss of never being able to see or know who this nameless, faceless person was, in my future children and in myself, is something that lasts a lifetime.

The young woman born of this procedure is concerned because she does not know who her father was.

There are other countries that have taken an open donation model where the donor agrees that at the appropriate age children the information about who they are will be given them so they can know something of their biological history. Procedures can be put in place to protect the person from financial obligation, but all children should have the right to know who their parents were.

All children should have the right to know what their genetic inheritance is, if only for health reasons. It would include their emotional, mental and physical health because there are inherited conditions that can affect their offspring in many generations to come. Anonymous donations where this just goes into a system and spins out, and produces a child with no knowledge of where it comes from violates this principle and violates the rights of children produced to know from whence they came.

Olivia argued:

An open system not only gives the child acknowledgment and respect; it also has a positive effect for all parties involved, as well as the overall societal impression of donor insemination. Maintaining an anonymous system implies that there is something shameful about this practice. How can we believe that emotionally healthy families can be created in such an environment?

Barry Stevens is another person produced from the early procedures who appeared before the committee and I would like to refer to his remarks. Barry Stevens made a film on the subject called Offspring . The film was about the search for his donor's identity and it won a Gemini award.

Barry gave evidence at the health committee on December 2, 2002. He brought attention to studies that dispel some of the myths about donor anonymity. Barry Stevens says: “We are often told that children born from gamete donations do not want to know their donor”. Mr. Stevens told us this was completely false. He pointed to a study that highlighted the fact that between 79% and 83% of donor offspring thought they should be able to know the identity of the donor and they wished very much to have that information. Their main concerns were the lack of genetic continuity and frustration in being thwarted in the search for their biological fathers.

A second study dispelled the myth that an open donor system would wither for a lack of donors. Mr. Stevens pointed to Sweden where a law was passed for a mandatory open system. After an initial drop there was a 65% increase in donors above the pre-law levels.

For those naysayers who say that if we were to go to an open system the whole system would collapse, it simply is not true. There are models of an open and responsible system. It tends to attract more responsible donors who are aware of the risk and willing to help. They are concerned about having children but for their own reasons want to do it in a responsible way. There are such people and this direction would be more respectful of the children that would be produced.

This is what the committee worked toward. There was quite a bit of discussion on this in committee. Frankly, the government side made sure that when it came to voting it did not come in this way. I hope members will reconsider because many members did not have the opportunity to hear the testimony of Olivia Pratten, Barry Stevens, and those who are firsthand products, who have had the experience, and who have lived with the consequences of being born from an anonymous system.

Mr. Stevens quoted figures saying 30% mistaken donor identity have been given but with little proof. Mr. Stevens quoted from a Lancet journal article saying the rates of non-paternity have taken on the character of urban folktales, pieces of conventional wisdom that are widely believed but have little basis in fact. The Lancet study actually found that non-paternity rates for some populations were as low as 1% to 3%. I suppose mistakes are possible but not on the scale that those who argue against an open system.

Mrs. Catherine Clute, a spokesperson for the Coalition for an Open Model in Assisted Reproduction, also gave testimony. She did not mix her words for the health committee. She stated that “anonymous gamete donation is a throwback and a travesty. As we have seen in adoption, secrets and lies provide no foundation for a family and certainly not for a life”.

This bill will come before the House for a vote. Rather than be voted on at third reading, it should go back to the health committee for reconsideration of this important issue of anonymity. We think the committee should hear the voices of Olivia Pratten, Barry Stevens, the people most affected, the people with the most experience, the people with a personal interest and passion for the subject, and the ones for whom this is not just another issue but the main issue and whose concern is to protect the children who will follow them as products of this technology. Their voices should be heard and the committee should consider this.

If we were to adopt the system, we should make it integral in Canada. We should have an open system of donation, one that respects the children who will be born and their futures, and concerned about the mental, emotional health and stability of the families that will be produced, as well as the generations that will come in this area. We need an open system and I hope all members will be ready to consider that and do the right thing for the sake of the children who will be born.

I would like to go for a moment to the minority report that came from the Alliance where we talked about the conflicts between ethics and science. It stated:

Nevertheless, there will always be situations where what is scientifically possible and what is ethically acceptable conflict. In such situations, we concur with the minister when he told the committee, “There must be a higher notion than science alone...that can guide scientific research and endeavour. Simply because we can do something, does not mean that we should do it”.

The recommendation in our minority report was:

That the mandate and code of practice of the Regulatory Body to be established by the legislation include a directive to the effect that where there is a conflict between ethical acceptability and scientifically possibility, the ethically acceptable course of action shall prevail.

We consider that an important aspect because it ties right in with the use of embryos for research. The member for Mississauga South has addressed this just recently. There has been much discussion in the House about the use of embryos for research.

The bill rightly would prevent the creation of embryos for research purposes, but in fact would allow for the creation of embryos through so-called surplus embryos left over from reproductive technologies. I am concerned because that would cause the most vulnerable people, the ones who are expected to give their embryos up because of their failed physiology, to attempt to find a way to have a child and we are saying to them, “Yes, we will help you have a child, but the leftover ones we want for research”.

The member opposite referred to Dr. Pothier who spoke at the UNESCO meeting related to reproductive technology. He said that there is no money in adult stem cell research. Dr. Freda Miller from McGill, now of Toronto, is one of our top researchers in the area of adult stem cell research. When I asked her about that she said that, frankly, she did not see any opportunity for patenting or profits in adult stem cells.

Yet, as committee members, like the member for Mississauga South, who have taken the trouble of educating themselves and understanding the science, along with scientists like Dr. Alan Bernstein, the head of the CIHR, Dr. Ron Worton, the head of the Ottawa stem cell research body, we have admitted that adult stem cells are where the best treatments are likely to come from. Why is it that this research will allow embryos--

[Reed Elley, Canadian Alliance, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to take the opportunity to thank my hon. colleague on the government side for all the hard work he has done to not only educate the members of the House but, indeed, the Canadian population on the seriousness of this issue.

I, like my colleague, cannot vote in favour of the bill for many reasons, one being that nowhere in the legislation does it allow the offspring of someone who has been created by in vitro fertilization to actually know the name and history of the father or mother. It is usually the father, of course. A constituent in my riding, Olivia Pratten, has lobbied long and hard to get this included in the legislation. She is 20 years of age at the moment and would like to know something about her father. She has no recourse within the legislation to ever know anything about her father.

I do not know whether my hon. colleague knows this, but my understanding is that there will be a court challenge to this part of the law should Bill C-13 pass and that it is planned to take this as far as the Supreme Court of Canada to right the wrong that is in this very flawed legislation.

I wonder if my hon. colleague could comment on that and comment on the kind of cost this would be to people's lives and to taxpayers as they have to take these things through the courts to change a bad law.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank all hon. colleagues for the opportunity to provide my input on Bill C-13.

Bill C-13, an act respecting assisted human reproductive technologies and related research, is an omnibus bill. As members know, an omnibus bill affects many bills and attempts to do so much that everyone can find something that they do not like in the bill. As well, omnibus bills are often used to get through the back door what one cannot get through the front door. This is the case with Bill C-13.

Bill C-13 was intended to prohibit--and I stress intended to prohibit--cloning and other unethical reproductive activity, to regulate fertility clinics and to regulate biomedical research. The bill falls short of meeting those objectives and I intend to lay out the facts for all members to consider.

Based on expert opinion, Bill C-13, despite the report stage motion that was passed, still does not ban all forms of cloning. Let me repeat that Bill C-13 still does not ban all forms of human cloning.

There are numerous techniques of cloning, such as somatic cell nuclear transfer which is reportedly the technique that was used by the Raelians, also parthenogenesis, germline cell nuclear transfer and many others. Cloning is not just one thing; it is a range of techniques all leading to the same thing.

Precise definitions are very important in the bill but they were handled very poorly according to numerous witnesses.

Dr. Ronald Worton is the chief executive officer of the Ottawa Health Research Institute. He is also the scientific director of the Canadian Stem Cell Network. He testified before the Standing Committee on Health that from a scientific perspective, many of the definitions in Bill C-13 were either incorrect or problematic. Dr. Worton is likely going to become a Nobel laureate for his research in health. His work is much respected in Canada and certainly by the health committee.

Others have also raised the same concern. In a submission to the committee, Dr. Dianne Irving, a research biochemist and biologist, detailed how contradictory and erroneous scientific definitions in the bill would not even prohibit all forms of human cloning.

If Bill C-13 is to achieve anything, it must ban all forms of cloning, all manners and all techniques and it does not.

Clause 5 of the bill states:

No person shall knowingly create a human clone or transplant a human clone into a human being.

On its face this is clear; one cannot create a human clone. Most people think that a human clone is a born child. They think of what the Raelians did. They birthed a child. That is a human clone.

In the bill a human clone is not a born person. Obviously if the bill says a human clone is a born child, one would not transplant it into a human being. Therefore it must not be a born person. In fact the bill defines human clone. It is defined as an embryo. A human clone is actually an embryo that, as a result of the manipulation of human reproductive material or an in vitro embryo, contains a diploid set of chromosomes obtained from a single living or deceased human being, fetus or embryo.

Now we can appreciate how confusing this is, but why is it confusing in the bill? Members have to ask themselves, why are the definitions so confusing? Why is the prohibition so confusing? Why are there so many gymnastics? Why can it not just outright state, no cloning by any means, any techniques? There is a reason.

The term “human being” is frequently used but is not defined in the bill. The usage verifies that it is referring to a born human being and the minister has confirmed this fact. She indicated that the definition being used comes from case law, from the laws of Canada, and means that it is a child completely emerged from the womb.

Dr. Irving has noted that that definition of human clone is flawed and would not cover certain types of cloning, including pronuclei transfer, formation of chimeras and back breeding, mitochondria transfer or DNA recombinant germline transfer also referred to as eugenics.

I am not an expert but I have looked up the terms. They exist and I accept the word of expert testimony that these are forms of cloning and these forms of cloning are not prohibited by this bill.

The deficiencies in drafting the bill also get worse. In clause 5(1)(c) the bill states:

No person shall knowingly

for the purpose of creating a human being, create an embryo from a cell or part of a cell taken from an embryo or foetus or transplant an embryo so created into a human being;

That is a difficult clause to understand but the problematic phrase in the clause is “for the purpose of creating a human being”. One is prohibited from doing that if the purpose is to create a human being. What happens if the purpose is not to create a human being? What happens if the purpose is to just do research? All of a sudden, if someone's purpose as a researcher is simply to create this embryo for research purposes, then the bill does not ban that activity.

On a prima facie case this is absolutely clear. Bill C-13 does not ban all forms of cloning. Nor does it prohibit unauthorized research on human embryos. This would allow cloned human embryos to be implanted in the uterus at the embryonic stage and then be harvested for research at any time from the embryonic period through the ninth month of gestation, anytime during the pregnancy of a woman. Not only could researchers get stem cells from that unborn child, they could also harvest organs from that unborn child. Now we are getting serious. This is not just simply a matter of cloning; this is a matter of using human beings and all their parts for research.

The faulty crafting of this clause is extremely dangerous, not only because it permits cloning but it also allows unborn children to be butchered for their parts. This is very technical and complex. That is why it is so important that expert testimony be obtained and why Health Canada must answer all the questions posed by members, and they have not.

Members of Parliament cannot be experts in all things. Therefore, we rely on credible evidence and comprehensive answers to the questions that we have asked. Members should know that despite the cautions of Dr. Worton and Dr. Irving, neither of them had the opportunity nor were they asked subsequently to appear before the health committee to present those concerns in detail. Why, when experts raise problems and concerns with either problematic or incorrect definitions, would the committee or Health Canada not address those concerns with experts?

Furthermore, the Minister of Health herself never appeared before the Standing Committee on Health to answer questions or defend Bill C-13 or to undertake to provide the committee with a response from her department to the very serious deficiencies noted by numerous experts. Why? That is the question.

To summarize, Bill C-13 does not ban all forms of human cloning and in its current form would permit research on unborn children as long as they were harvested before birth. These are fatal flaws in Bill C-13.

I want to move on to comment on the creation of in vitro human embryos. Bill C-13 seeks to prohibit the creation of a human embryo for any purpose other than creating a human being. In other words, if it is for the purpose of reproduction, that is fine. For other purposes, it will not be permitted unless one can get a licence from an agency.

We should note that the fertility industry habitually harvests more eggs from women and creates more human embryos than are reasonably necessary for in vitro fertilization. Women can be drugged to the max, and they are based on expert testimony before the committee, and a fertility clinic can harvest up to 25 eggs. However they only need three to five eggs for the first fertility treatment under IVF. All those eggs would be fertilized and those that are not necessary for the first attempt at IVF would be frozen, and I will comment on that in a while. The point is, in vitro fertilization as part of the normal course of its operation does create surplus embryos.

The minister rationalizes that research on embryos should be permitted since these human embryos are no longer required for reproductive purposes and they will just be thrown in the garbage. That was her response to the press when she tabled the bill on May 9 of last year. The Minister of Health said to go ahead and use them for research if they were only going to be thrown in the garbage. This is appalling. One would have thought that if surplus human embryos were being created, the appropriate response for any Minister of Health should be, “How do we reduce or eliminate the creation of surplus embryos?” Should it not be to fix the problem rather than to take advantage of the problem?

The fundamental principle of the bill is that human embryos can only be created for the purpose of creating a human being. Yet what we are saying is that if there happens to be some left over, let us use them for research anyway because otherwise they will be thrown in the garbage.

Dr. Françoise Baylis has been very important in this process. She is a professor of medicine and philosophy at Dalhousie University and is vice chair of the board of governors of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. In her testimony before the Standing Committee on Health, Dr. Baylis said:

The first thing to recognize in the legislation and in all of your conversations is that embryos are human beings. That is an uncontested biological fact. They are a member of the human species.

Bill C-13 disputes the biological facts. To accept the fact that a human embryo is a human being would make it illegal to destroy human embryos for research even if those embryos were no longer needed for fertility treatments.

I understand that this is a very delicate issue because we are talking about when life begins. Human embryos are human beings and are entitled to the protection and dignity afforded to all human beings. Furthermore, human beings do die and when they do, we do not throw them in the garbage. How absurd. We put them to rest in an appropriate and dignified manner. I know that the medical community has established appropriate guidelines for when a human being dies and for its appropriate and dignified disposition. The medical community would never say to just throw them in the garbage.

Researchers want these embryos because they want stem cells within the embryos. We know that. They hope that these stem cells may one day be useful in treating illnesses. However stem cells from embryos have shown a tendency to spontaneously create tumours and other unintended cells. In addition, they do not have the same DNA as the prospective patient and therefore they are subject to immune rejection and would require lifelong anti-rejection drugs. This is good news for the pharmaceutical industry but it is very bad news for the human embryo and those who acknowledge the biological fact that human embryos are human beings.

One of the primary principles of medical ethics is that if the scientifically possible is in conflict with the ethically unacceptable, the ethical view must prevail. Our responsibilities as members of Parliament is to therefore ensure that human beings, at any stage, must never be used for biomedical research because there are ethical alternatives.

The situation with surplus embryos actually is much worse than the public really understands. If a fertility clinic drugs a woman to the maximum, as I have said, and harvests 25 eggs, only three to five of those actually will be necessary for in vitro fertilization. The remaining 20 embryos would be cryogenically frozen and thawed as needed for future attempts as necessary. However, and this is an important point, 50% of frozen embryos do not survive the thawing process. That means that of the remaining 25 embryos that are cryogenically frozen and thawed for future use, 10 of them will be destroyed. They will die simply because the cryogenic freezing process is unacceptable.

This is a tragically low threshold of success for any medical procedure, and we can and should do better. How can we tolerate the destruction of so many human beings as part of a process that itself is attempting to create human beings? There is a grave contradiction here.

There are other alternative approaches to these problems. If there are surplus embryos, medical research communities should be working to perfect the techniques to eliminate or reduce the creation of surplus embryos. Medical research should concentrate its efforts on perfecting the process to store the eggs that are harvested from women, not the fertilized eggs but the eggs from women, and only fertilize those that are necessary for reproductive purposes. That process is now under intensive research outside of Canada. I am not sure what is happening inside of Canada. When it is perfected, there will be no surplus embryos.

At this time the research community has developed an in vitro fertilization process that habitually produces surplus embryos, which are in turn used for their own research. Research is supplying itself using IVF as the delivery point. This is a conflict of interest, and in the extreme. We as legislators have a responsibility to correct this unacceptable situation.

Another alternative is to permit the adoption of surplus embryos by other infertile couples. This is no different than adopting a born child. In the United States there is a program that is doing just that. It is called the snowflake program and it has been very successful. If this bill were truly intended to assist the infertile, why has Health Canada rejected this viable and successful program, a program that would make use of any surplus embryos.

Today in Canada there are approximately 24 fertility clinics and many of these are private for profit companies. As such, we do not really know how many surplus embryos are presently in storage nor how many would have received informed consent to be donated for research purposes. However Dr. Baylis has done an informal survey and she estimates that there are about 500 embryos frozen in Canada, in total. Of those, half are necessary for future IVF treatments. That means there are 250 that may be available for research purposes.

As I indicated, half of these will die while thawing. Of the 250, 125 will die while thawing. Therefore, we are down to 125. Then Dr. Baylis goes on to explain that of those 125, only 9 of the frozen embryos when thawed would actually be able to produce a viable stem cell line. Of the 9, only 5 of them would be of a standard that would meet the quality requirements of researchers. Think it out. Only 5 out of 250 embryos that are thawed would actually be useful. That is 2%. In other words, 100 human beings would be destroyed to obtain 2 useful stem cell lines, which may be able to be used to find cures and therapies to assist other human beings. This makes no sense at all.

One would think that Health Canada would have determined whether there were sufficient embryos to sustain meaningful research in advance of preparing this bill to regulate research and fertility clinics. Why has it not? I know Dr. Baylis is looking for funding to do a formal survey but we do not know what is happening in fertility clinics. We do not know what is happening out there today. How can we have legislation to regulate fertility clinics? These are the same fertility clinics that refused to appear before the health committee to disclose how they operated their businesses. This is awful. I cannot understand how that happened.

There is also another ethical alternative to destroying embryos to obtain those stem cells. Stem cells actually occur naturally in every organ of the human body. Last year Dr. Catherine Verfaillie published verified research that stem cells from bone marrow could become virtually any cell in the human body. This means that stem cells from a person's own body could be taken and used to repair damaged cells elsewhere in that person's body. That means that there is no ethical controversy, no immune rejection problem, no need for lifelong anti-rejection drugs and no concern about the spontaneous creation of tumours.

Why is it that the researchers are so anxious to have stem cells taken from embryos despite the ethical controversy and all the other problems, such as immune rejection? There is an answer and we heard it. I know a couple of members were there at the same meeting.

The bold and the true answer came from Dr. François Pothier, who has a Ph.D. in cellular biology and is a professor at Laval University. On February 5, 2003, while addressing a round table on assisted human reproduction, sponsored by the Friendship Group of Parliamentarians for UNESCO he answered the following question: Why do we want embryonic stem cells? Why are we shunning adult stem cells? His answer was “There is no money in adult stem cell research”.

That is the answer that everyone has been waiting for. Why do we want embryonic stem cells? It will cause all kinds of interesting scenarios for commercialization, drug use and all kinds of opportunities for people to make money. According to Dr. Pothier, and I believe this sincerely, the reason we do not concentrate on research using adult stem cells is that there is no money in adult stem cell research.

If one's own stem cells could be used to treat themselves, the prospect for patenting and commercialization would be diminished. Drug companies would also have less incentive to provide research funding. If research was unlikely to lead to increased need for the drugs why would they? One can only conclude that the bill really is about money.

We know that researchers migrate to money and have shown only a secondary interest in the ethics of research. I have tried to move a motion at report stage to include amendments to the Patent Act to guide the patentability of biomedical research. I was ruled out of order because Health Canada said that it was beyond the scope of the bill.

On the contrary, patenting of such research would likely reduce research done in Canada because the cost of patented techniques would be prohibitive for other researchers to use.

If patenting of biomedical research is allowed, the amount of effective, meaningful research in Canada will actually go down.

With regard to biomedical research, Bill C-13 would establish the assisted human reproduction agency of Canada. It would have the authority to issue a licence to authorize the use of human embryos for the purpose of research only if it is satisfied that the use is necessary for the purpose of the proposed research. The word “necessary” is the key.

In the opinion of the Standing Committee on Health, the criteria for what constituted necessary must be laid out. As a starting point, the following is what was recommended in the health committee' report: Even if all other regulatory criteria are met, no licence may be issued unless the applicant clearly demonstrates that no other category of biological material could be used for the purposes of the proposed research.

In other words, embryonic stem cells cannot be used if there is another ethical alternative. It is a good compromise I think for most but Health Canada rejected the recommendation of the committee and emphatically refused to define the term “necessary” in the legislation.

It is hard to believe that there are no criteria in the bill to guide this agency that would authorize and licence the research. Something might be buried in the regulations but I will talk about that later.

One would think that if research proposed has already been done then a licence should not be issued. If there are other ethical means to achieve the research, then a licence should not be issued in that case either. It simply does not make sense not to articulate the fundamental principles that should guide the agency.

Health Canada appears to be totally dependent upon the research industry. In fact, we all know it was the research industry that developed Bill C-13. The research industry, right back from the royal commission, right through the CIHR and all the iterations of the bill, the research community was the driver of what is in the bill. My sincere belief is that Health Canada went along for the ride.

The Standing Committee on Health spent two years studying the draft bill and Bill C-13. It received hundreds of submissions and heard from over 200 witnesses. I was very impressed with the quality of work that was done by the committee. In fact, the report on the draft bill was the best report I had ever seen.

After due consideration, however, the committee made only three substantive amendments. The first was that 50% of the board of directors of the agency should be women. The second was to ensure that people wanting IVF treatment would receive counselling and independent advice. The third was that the conflict of interest provisions in the bill would be broadened so that pharmaceutical and biotech companies could not be on the board of directors.

Those were very reasonable amendments and yet Health Canada rejected every one of them and put in report stage motions to reverse them. As a result of two years of work done by committee and after all the witnesses who appeared before it, there is nothing substantive in the bill, and that is a shame. I honestly believe the bill would have been better with many of the committee's recommendations.

This is a very troubling situation and it should raise caution levels of all members with regard to the credibility of Bill C-13. When ministers, the staff and the bureaucrats in all departments ignore the work and recommendations of standing committees and ignore the questions and suggestions of members of Parliament, the bill in question develops an opposition. If hon. members do not receive satisfactory explanations to their concerns or answers to their questions how can we say that we have discharged our responsibilities?

I believe members have been misled by the hype and rhetoric surrounding Bill C-13. The bill already has serious deficiencies and more will come out when questions are answered. In my view, the bill cannot be fixed in its present form. As the member for Hochelaga--Maisonneuve suggested, its deficiencies would be better addressed by a split bill, one dealing with prohibited activities and the other dealing with regulating research. The minister still has that option.

The bill also has other notable problems and I will deal with them quickly. The bill would prohibit the creation of a chimera. However a chimera, as defined in the bill, is the combining of animal and human, but it would prohibit the transplantation of non-human material into humans. It would not do the reverse. The bill would permit the transplantation of human reproductive material into non-human life forms, and the minister has said that this is necessary research. I do not buy that.

The bill would not permit the creation of a hybrid for the purpose of reproduction. However if the purpose of the research is in fact to do research, then hybrids would be permitted because they would not be used for reproduction but for research.

With regard to conflict of interest, as I have already indicated, the bill presently says that pharmaceutical companies and biotech companies can be on the board of directors. Why not? It is a conflict to the extreme. The bill would not require board members to file conflict of interest statements. Health Canada said that it would be too inconvenient for someone who was not paid very much and because part time appointees are less likely to have a conflict. This is faulty logic.

The bill would not prescribe transitional provisions relating to frozen embryos that existed prior to the bill coming into force but it should. It is very important. There are 500 embryos out there. How do we deal with them?

The bill would not require all fertility clinics to use the same application or information disclosures? Why not? It was recommended at report stage. Would consistent documentation, forms, disclosures and consent, et cetera, not make some sense?

The bill does not prescribe limits on the amount of drugs that can be administered to women and other limits that can affect women's health. Why would we not do that since this is a women's health bill?

There is very substantial policy in the regulations. Although members can have an opportunity to review the regulations, the bill goes on to say that members will only be able to comment. In other words, parliamentarians will not get an opportunity to approve or reject regulations to the bill, and most of the details of the bill are buried in the regulations. We will not see that until two years after royal assent. Parliament has a problem.

The bill would permit the use of surplus embryos for the purpose of education but it has no rules. As the member for the Bloc mentioned, it would provide surrogacy for profit and reimbursement of employment income. Those things were rejected right from the royal commission all the way down the line, and it was sprung on the House at the last minute. That must change.

If we were to defeat the bill, fix it and reintroduce two improved bills, one on prohibitive activities and one on controlled activities, they would result in earlier enforcement than if we proceed with Bill C-13 as it is now. A bill on prohibitive activities would pass at all stages very quickly and would be in force immediately, which is what Canadians want to see.

The other two are more problematic and that is what is delaying this whole process. I think we have to do some serious thinking about this.

The bill attempts to address reproductive technologies but it does so very poorly. It also touches on the very delicate, ethical and moral issues related to the sanctity of human life. For this reason a vote on this bill is a matter of conscience. I personally do not condone the destruction of human beings for research purposes under any circumstances. Consequently, I will be voting against Bill C-13.

[Réal Ménard, Bloc, Hochelaga—Maisonneuve, QC]

Mr. Speaker, this is like a pregnancy. I wondered whether this would ever happen. We are all aware of the ups and downs this bill has put the House through.

Perhaps I should point out at the outset that the Standing Committee on Health, to which the bill was referred, has worked long and hard on Bill C-13. This is a bill with a history: it was previously introduced as Bill C-47, which died on the order paper, then came back as Bill C-56 in 2000, and we now have Bill C-13, which we are debating.

The Bloc Quebecois has always had concerns about certain prohibited procedures. I am thinking about cloning in particular. In the mid 1990s, the hon. member for Drummond, whose riding is located in the heart of Quebec, put forward a bill to prohibit cloning for reproductive and therapeutic purposes.

This is an aberration, an odd situation brought to the fore by the whole Clonaid episode over the holiday season. Some of our fellow citizens were under the impression that they were protected against any attempt at cloning by a public or private laboratory.

Unfortunately, we had to disillusion them when it became our duty as parliamentarians to explain that, if a public or private laboratory had, indeed, succeeded with human cloning experiments, as the Raelians implied, for example, unfortunately, there were no provisions in the Criminal Code that could have led to any legal action against those who were guilty of genetic manipulation, up to and including human cloning.

Very early in the history of the Bloc Quebecois, the member for Drummond was made aware of this issue. It was because of her sensitivity not only to the cause of women, but also to the entire issue of respect for human life, that she came to present a bill which, as we know, did not have the support of the government.

It was all the more incomprehensible because, in 1989, a royal commission was set up. The Baird commission of course recommended that legislators ban practices like cloning. The royal commission was a very important moment for those who are interested in such issues, because 293 recommendations were made.

We might ask ourselves this question: How is it that there were recommendations and that there was a royal commission? We know that a royal commission is not a trifling matter. It is set up by the Privy Council and its budget is quite substantial. A lot of research was done and scientific studies were carried out. Why is it that we have had the information we need for creating legislation since 1990, and it is not until 2003—13 years later— that the House is going to be asked to vote on this matter?

The government's attitude has definitely been rather lax. There is certainly no cause for satisfaction. This is one more issue on which the Bloc Quebecois has been particularly vigilant.

When I said that the Standing Committee on Health had devoted much time and energy to the issue of assisted human reproduction, it is important to remember that, as early as 1991, the then Minister of Health, now the Minister of Industry, had introduced draft legislation. Even before the official introduction and first reading of a bill by a minister of the Crown, the Standing Committee on Health had been asked to give its views on a number of issues. The bill asked us to validate a certain number of hypotheses with respect to the preamble to a bill like this one and the type of regulations that should be implemented. I will have the opportunity to discuss this later.

The committee considered six possible regulatory models, and selected a semi-autonomous agency, appointed by the Governor in Council. We would have preferred the board to be equally represented by both genders. The government did not retain this recommendation, but the board does have a certain degree of autonomy.

During review of the draft legislation, we were asked to reflect on the whole issue of prohibited and regulated activities, and various mechanisms for accountability that I will have an opportunity to explain shortly. However, Bill C-13 is characterized by the fact that the regulations are more important than the bill itself.

Most of the 26 major decisions about reproduction, manipulation and assisted human reproduction treatments, while covered in the bill, will be set out in the regulations. That is why the committee was strongly advised to ensure that the regulations would be subject to periodic review and would be referred to the Standing Committee on Health. As happened with the bill, public consultations will be held when the committee considers the regulations.

One question greatly concerns the Bloc Quebecois, which we naturally discussed in caucus. The Bloc Quebecois believes it is necessary for the Criminal Code to include provisions criminalizing certain practices. First and foremost, of course, is cloning.

But what is the approach? The Bloc Quebecois in defending the interests of Quebec—which is what brings it here—unfortunately had to oppose this bill at the report stage. Why so? I will explain, because we have received a number of letters and inquiries from the public in this connection.

Although we were in favour of this bill in principle, the Bloc Quebecois cannot vote in favour of such a bill. And why not? Because Bill C-13 intrudes in areas that are fundamentally under the jurisdiction of the provinces.

The Government of Quebec, through its health minister François Legault, has written the federal Minister of Health asking that this bill not be passed, that it not be followed up on in the House of Commons.

A list has been made of all the legislation passed by the National Assembly that is incompatible with Bill C-13. I will have an opportunity to come back to that list but I will touch on it briefly here. There are about a dozen acts, and of course the most important is the Quebec civil code. It contains certain provisions that are incompatible with the issue of surrogacy.

Bill C-13 is also incompatible with the Act respecting health services and social services, as well as with the Act respecting access to documents held by public bodies; the Act respecting the protection of personal information; the Act respecting medical laboratories; Quebec's Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms, including the whole area of confidentiality of some nominative information; the medical code of ethics; the guidelines of the Quebec health research fund, commonly known to people in the field as the FRSQ; not to mention the ministerial action plan on ethics and scientific integrity, which was published by the former member for Vimont on behalf of the Government of Quebec. This is all very disquieting.

Come to think of it, all treatments for infertility take place in laboratories located, naturally, in hospitals, university research centres and, occasionally, in private clinics. The best known such clinic in Quebec is, of course, PROCREA.

Why should the federal government interfere in what basically amounts to the delivery of services in health care facilities that come under the various provincial governments? Naturally, it is doing so through the Criminal Code, because of certain illegal procedures.

If the Canadian government had put before the House of Commons a bill to criminalize only a few procedures, namely the 13 prohibited procedures I will list in a moment, we in the Bloc Quebecois would have voted for such a bill with enthusiasm and our well-known sense of responsibility.

We felt so strongly about this that when we resumed our work here in January, I moved a motion inviting the government and the entire House to split this bill. However, the government rejected this idea, which is why we are now bogged down with this bill. We have been discussing this issue since May 2001. In fact, we have been discussing this topic for several years now. The federal government could have simply prohibited a certain number of procedures.

What is the reality? The member for Trois-Rivières also explained, through a motion that he moved in the House, that the government wants to use health to do some nation building. That is what the Romanow report proposes, naturally, and Bill C-13 is a good example of this. That said, there are still a certain number of important provisions.

Let us start with what are arguably the most important clauses found in the bill, clauses 5, 6 and 9. They render a number of procedures illegal. Therefore, if it can be proven, either before an inspector or a court of justice, anyone who is involved in any of these prohibited procedures could be brought to court under criminal charges by the crown, which could lead to either imprisonment, or a fine of between $200,000 to $500,000. The seriousness of these offences is reflected by these heavy fines.

So, what are these prohibited procedures? Of course, creating a human clone. This is an ethical issue. Incidentally, this bill deals with a variety of considerations, such as ethical and medical considerations, in addition to family law, and of course, administrative considerations as well, all at the same time.

Why is it so important to prohibit human cloning? What is cloning? First, it is a medical procedure where the nucleus is removed from somatic cells. This cell is taken and another nucleus is added, and it is then fertilized. With the help of the maturation process, it is hoped that the cell will have a new nucleus containing new genetic material, which will lead to the birth of a child that has a genetic makeup identical to the genetic makeup of the person from whom the original cell was used. That is cloning.

Cloning was first tried, with mixed results, on animals. I say with mixed results because the committee was told that the consequences for cloned animals, naturally, were extremely serious, the most immediate being premature aging and, of course, premature death. So, no animals have been successfully cloned, and this, obviously, does not encourage us to try human cloning.

But there is an ethical side to cloning. No one wants to live in a society where, in the name of humankind, we can biologically bring about the creation of two humans with identical genes. No one wants that.

I saw public affairs shows on TQS, for example, where the Raelians said, “Yes, but there are twin brothers”. Of course, there are identical twins. This is a natural phenomenon. It is called homozygotic embryos. I have an identical twin brother myself. This makes some people happy and some sad, each of us is entitled to our own opinion, but the fact remains that this was not forced on nature. It is a natural phenomenon. Some people say that there is really no such thing as identical twin brothers, because life, through our personality, ensures that each of us is very different. For example, my twin is heterosexual; I, as you know, am not. We are pretty much alike in our sense of humour. But we are very different in every other respect.

My twin brother is greatly interested in sport and a little less intellectually inclined than I. We do, however, share a similarly refined sense of humour.

It is not true, then, that identical twins with the same genetic baggage, homozygotic twins that started out from a single cell, from a single egg, are alike in every aspect.

The question raised by human cloning is what it will mean for psychogenesis, the psychological development of the child. How can a parent raise a child knowing he or she is the duplicate of the parent, knowing they are genetically identical? Scientists came to testify that, on the psychological level, at every stage of personal development, this poses a risk for human development. This is prohibited by the bill as a result.

The second procedure that is prohibited in the bill is the creation of an embryo in vitro for purposes other than the creation of a human being. We would not want to live in a society where embryos were created solely for research purposes.

This does not mean—and I will have an opportunity to explain further when we reach the clauses on regulated activities—that if there are surplus embryos as part of the initial activity of fertilization, for example if four are created, that a person cannot donate them for research purposes with informed consent.

Research on embryos is definitely necessary, but the bill says that a person could not turn up and announce that he wanted to use medicine to create an embryo solely for research purposes. This is prohibited in the bill.

An embryo cannot be created and then maintained outside of a woman's body, i.e. in vitro, for more than 14 days. The basis for this is that the main international conventions state that the nervous system begins development on the 15th day and it can then be dangerous to keep an embryo outside a woman's body. This is prohibited.

There is another important prohibition that is also related to ethical considerations. It is forbidden to use sperm screening and selection to choose a child's sex. A father cannot announce that he wants a girl, or a mother announce that she wants a boy, and then make use of medical and genetic means in order to ensure that this happens.

Why is this prohibited? It is prohibited based on the values found in both the Quebec and Canadian charters. The first of these values that govern the legal and human community is the equality of individuals. We do not start from the pretext that women are superior to men or that men are superior to women. Given that there is no such superiority, it does not make sense that the bill would contain mechanisms that would officially allow people to choose the sex of a child. That is why it is prohibited.

There is also an important prohibition that bans any alterations to the germ line. The germ line refers to hereditary characteristics that are passed down from one generation to the next, or that skip one generation, in the case of certain deadly diseases that we know of.

We do not want to live in a society where people can have their children tailor-made. It should not be possible to say, “I want the genetic tools that will allow me to have a blond girl with blue eyes, who will be a good painter, or artist, or ballet-jazz dancer”. Accordingly, the bill stipulates that it will not be possible to have tailor-made children, nor will it be possible to select hereditary traits by altering the germ line.

Obviously—plain common sense dictates this—transplanting sperm or ova into another form of life, other than human, will be prohibited. Implanting human reproductive material that has already been transplanted into another form of life is prohibited. This is known as the creation of hybrids, or chimera, and it is clearly prohibited in this bill.

Another prohibited procedure that attracted a great deal of attention in Quebec is surrogacy, or surrogate motherhood. This reminds us that this bill is designed to deal with an empirically observed situation: one out of every five couples experiences fertility problems. This situation is not expected to improve in the near future. Often, environmental factors cause hormonal imbalances that may affect the ability to procreate.

Some people say we should live in a society where a couple can ask a woman with no fertility problems to bear a child.

A number of nuances or clarifications could be made on the issue of surrogacy. Let me make the following. We have been told that a surrogate mother artificially inseminated with sperm from the father who hired her is called a genetic surrogate. A surrogate mother could also carry an embryo created through IVF using the hiring couple's gametes. In this instance, the surrogate mother is making her uterus available, but there is no genetic contribution.

So, surrogacy poses quite a complex ethical problem, because one might think that women own the children to which they give birth. They do not. Pregnancy has to be an altruistic act. Women who bring children into the world with their spouse must do so, whether it was planned or not, because of their desire as a couple to raise a family.

There are therefore major inconsistencies between the bill and the civil code. Even if these were the only inconsistencies, the Bloc Quebecois would have to vote against the bill. There are, however, many more, which I will point out.

In this respect, a provision was included in the civil code of Quebec a few years ago. If I am not mistaken, it is section 541. It provides that agreements for surrogacy for payment are null and void. This means that, in Quebec, under the civil code, if I ask a woman to bear a child for me, I will have absolutely no right in the unborn child. As far as the mother who bore the child is concerned, the regular lineage rights—the parental authority, and all that it means for a mother to have responsibility for a child—apply.

This is where we find out how well I know the civil code. I would be willing to bet that it is article 541, just after the provisions on adoption, which says that agreements regarding surrogate mothers are absolutely null. I will read the passage in question:

Any agreement whereby a woman undertakes to procreate or carry a child for another person is absolutely null.

That is article 541 of the civil code. The lawmakers of Quebec did not wait for Bill C-13 to be passed; they put these provisions in the civil code.

But now we see that Bill C-13, in clauses 6 and 12, says there are certain situations in which surrogate mothers can be reimbursed. That is quite sad. I do not know how we are going to settle this before the courts. Will it be the civil code or Bill C-13 that prevails?

Bill C-13 says two things. It says that it will be possible to recognize surrogate mothers who do this as an altruistic gesture. But is it not strange to see written in a bill that it will be possible for a woman to carry a child for someone else? Might that not make us think that children are perceived as a kind of property and that women are the owners of children? Should we not be seeking other ways to respond to people with fertility problems? Of course, reproductive technologies, such as in vitro fertilization, are one such way.

Research is needed into the causes of infertility related to the endocrine system. Domestic or international adoption is also a solution. It is, therefore, somewhat aberrant that we find ourselves with such a bill in 2003.

The Bloc Quebecois held its convention this past weekend, and it was a great moment for democracy, Mr. Speaker. We missed you a bit, but you can always come next time. We discussed all these issues in workshops.

One of the great specialists in Quebec, Professor Louise Vandelac—whom you may have heard of— is very well known internationally. Although she has also researched GMOs, her main concern is the life sciences. She told us, “It is incredible that such a thing could be happening in 2003” and added, “in the country of Margaret Atwood”, referring to the English Canadian novelist and writer. She continued, “How can English Canada, the Government of Canada, turn up in 2003 with Bill C-13 in which it is acknowledged that a woman has the right to call upon another woman to bear a child for her?” This does not, of course, make any sense.

It does not stop there, however, Despite the fact that the Quebec has adopted as part of its civil code—in the mid-80s if I remember correctly—the section I have read, section 541, still clause 12 of this bill opens up the possibility of reimbursing surrogate mothers for altruistic purposes. It is true that this bill—and I must be honest about this so that those listening to us will not be misled—says that payment for surrogate motherhood is totally forbidden, that is if someone wanted to pay another to have a child.

This is one of the 12 procedures I have referred to which can lead to prosecution and to imprisonment or a fine of $500,000. Nevertheless, it is possible to bear children for others and the federal government will recognize surrogate motherhood agreements. Clause 10 even contains provisions for certain expenses of surrogate mothers to be met.

So, hon. members will see the incompatibility here, the value choices. Ethical decisions have been made by the National Assembly, but will not, unfortunately, be respected by the Canadian Parliament.

This whole issue of surrogacy is a very serious one. Once again, I have no idea how this will be settled by the courts. We had hoped that the federal government would not get involved and that the provinces would be in charge, as is already the case in Quebec.

This pretty well covers the issue of surrogacy agreements, the importance of which is well known. I think I have also demonstrated how these do not comply with the civil code of Quebec.

I thought I had a good half hour remaining, seeing that I have barely started my speech, but I will come back to that in due course, because I am getting the signal that I have only 10 minutes left.

The bill addresses the whole issue of controlled activities. No one is saying that there should be no research on embryos or infertility. The agency that will be established will receive $10 million a year and bring together individuals who, we hope, will not only have expertise but also reflect a range of backgrounds, to include not only members of the scientific community but also users. The agency will issue licences for research. Researchers who demonstrate that a need exists, that research cannot be conducted using existing reproductive material, and that the research is validated by an ethics committee and based on a serious protocol, will qualify for a licence.

This opens the door to the use of stem cells. That is why our colleagues from the Canadian Alliance have been opposed to this bill all along.

What are stem cells? The embryo sac, which is created a few hours after conception, contains stem cells. Researchers do not agree on the number of them. Some American researchers say that there a hundred or so, and Canadian researchers say that it is more like 300. For the purposes of my speech, we will say that there are between 100 and 300 of these stem cells. These cells have not decided what their future holds and they are able to contribute to the rebirth or regeneration of any tissue, whether it be tissues found in the heart, arm, or anywhere in the entire body.

This is extremely valuable, and unlike adult stem cells, they are not in blood, or produced in bone marrow, but are found in the embryo sac. As a result, they are easy to extract, and they can obviously be used to help people with major degenerative disorders. We have heard about Alzheimer's, cerebral palsy, juvenile diabetes and other diseases.

This is why big associations that do fundraising for this type of research explained how important it is that this bill contain regulated activities to allow for this type of research. Carrying out this type of research that uses stem cells destroys embryos.

Depending on how one defines a human being, some people say that by destroying embryos, you are committing a crime against humanity, that the embryo is a potential human being. I respect this point of view, but I do not share it. The Supreme Court clearly established that a human being is a fetus once it is outside the mother's body and has taken its first breath.

People will recall that there were a number of legal challenges on this. It might have been nice if it were legislators who had made the decision, but the abortion bill introduced by the Conservatives ended up being unique in terms of our legislative work. In fact, in the Senate, the other house, there was a tie vote. It was referred to this House. There was no conclusive vote, and there was a legal vacuum until the Supreme Court issued a judgment and ruled that an embryo was not a human being.

To be logical, from a legal point of view, if an embryo is not a human being, then we cannot, as legislators, consider any of its constituent material as a human being. That is why I was in agreement. It is not the part of the bill that I am most concerned about. Of course, that will not stop me from supporting ethical issues. I believe stem cell research must carry on, because it is important to make life better for the people who are suffering from degenerative diseases.

I have mentioned the 12 prohibited activities. The controlled activities are specified in clauses 10, 11 and 12. They would include research on embryos or reproductive material in accordance with the regulations and a licence. Any research carried out without the proper licence would be in violation of clauses 5, 6 and 9, which I referred to earlier.

Among the issues raised during our work was the type of donations that could be made. As I said, with this bill, we want to meet the needs of those with fertility problems, which affect one out of every five couples. People with fertility problems may want to go for treatment, either insemination or in vitro fertilization. For this to happen, donors have to go to a hospital or to some institution authorized to receive their donations. I am talking, of course, about the people who donate sperm or ova, what is called gametes. Interestingly enough, there is a shortage of sperm in English Canada. The sperm banks are empty.

As for Quebec, for perhaps other more sociological reasons and also because the regulations are not quite identical, there are fewer difficulties in ensuring a supply of sperm.

Of course, Mr. Speaker, sperm donors cannot be older than 40. This has excluded you for quite some time. At the same time, sperm donors must undergo all kinds of medical tests. The sperm is tested for genetic defects or disease. Obviously, some very important tests need to be done.

The committee asked itself the following question: if you are a donor and you go to a hospital or clinic, would you be required to reveal your identity? If you are going to donate sperm, must you identify yourself? Currently, donations are anonymous.

The parliamentary secretary will remember that many people made representations, including children born as a result of assisted reproduction, from anonymous sperm donations, and they said, “This is called the right to know who you are”.

For human development, it is not desirable, they told us, to not know who the donor is. I was moved by one individual who testified that when she was in grade five in a public school in English Canada, her teacher asked all the students in the class to do their family tree. You know the drill. Our family tree allows us to discover our ancestors and understand who we came from. This is obviously important to the formation of our identity. This person, born as a result of an anonymous donation, told us what a wall she had run up against, how she felt as if she had come from nowhere, how important it was to her for donations to be anonymous but not the identity of donors.

The opposing opinion says that, in donating sperm or eggs, the donors are not making any attempt to raise a child nor any attempt to raise a family. Those who oppose identity disclosure for donors said, “Yes, but is there not a risk if I donate sperm and the child born is viable, when that child reaches 16, 17 or 18 he will seek financial support from me as the genetic father and donor”.

People were worried about that. That point of view prevailed, so thoroughly that, according to the bill now before us, the regulatory agency must gather information on donors. Of course, it must gather identity data, and other information in order to maintain records, but it is not mandatory to divulge the identity of the donor.

Naturally, this has created discontent and disappointment, but there is a way to solve the problem. Quebec has solved it, as have Nova Scotia and Yukon. Thus, there are three legislatures where laws have been passed and the laws contain provisions that, in the case of children born through medically assisted reproduction, donors can never be considered genetic fathers having parental responsibilities. Three provinces have done this. Obviously, it lies within the area of family law. It is not up to the federal government to create such legislation, but this could have been done.

So, that is a question that has been asked. The systems created in some countries make it mandatory to divulge identities. I can think of Sweden, Australia, New Zealand and Austria, among others.

Mr. Speaker, I think my time is running out, but because of the importance of this debate, and in consideration of the excellent work I did in committee, could you please ask for unanimous consent to allow me 10 minutes more to complete my speech. I will not take advantage of this, but I would then feel we had addressed the issue completely.

Business of the House

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

Mr. Speaker, the continuing fear of Liberal candidate Brian Innes is duly noted, but this afternoon the House will continue with the opposition day motion on the war in Iraq. There are discussions going on with regard to this subject which may continue today and otherwise.

As previously ordered, the House will not be sitting tomorrow.

On Monday, pursuant to what I just stated, we will return to consideration of Bill C-13, the reproductive technologies legislation, followed by report stage of Bill C-9, the environmental assessment legislation.

I am also looking forward, with the usual cooperation of all hon. members for an appropriate time and hopefully very soon, to resuming the consideration of the Senate amendments to Bill C-10, the Criminal Code amendments.

Thursday of next week, in other words a week from today, shall be an allotted day.

In the event that there are additions or other changes to this business, I shall communicate with other House leaders through the usual channels.

Sex Offender Information Registration Act

[Réal Ménard, Bloc, Hochelaga—Maisonneuve, QC]

Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I wonder if I can obtain the consent of all parties to do the following.

I believe that the government is preparing to go forward with Bill C-13, as was announced. I am the next member to speak on this bill, now at third reading. I am entitled to speak for 40 minutes, but the House is scheduled to proceed to private members' business in 10 minutes. In order not to interrupt my speech, I wonder if I could obtain unanimous consent to go straight to private members' business.

Assisted Human Reproduction Act

[Réal Ménard, Bloc, Hochelaga—Maisonneuve, QC]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-13 now before us is nothing new to the House, since it was first introduced as Bill C-47, in 1997, then as Bill C-56 and now as Bill C-13. Therefore, as parliamentarians, we have been pondering these issues for some years now.

Our hon. colleague from the New Democratic Party has raised a number of concerns. I would like to ask her a number of short questions, if I may.

First, I would like to know what she thinks of the make-up of the board of directors, which will consist of 13 members. At report stage, we recommended that half of the members be women. However, I understand that she would have liked to see more stringent provisions concerning conflicts of interests, and I would like her to elaborate on that.

I would also like to find out what she thinks of the requirement to disclose the name of the donors. There were two schools of thought on this issue. Some argued that the donors should remain anonymous and others thought that their names should be disclosed. I would like her thoughts on this.

Third, I would like to know if the preamble to the bill meets with her agreement.

I have other questions, but they will have to wait until next time. For now, I would like to hear what the member has to say about all of this.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from the Bloc Quebecois. It is with great pleasure that I rise in the House today because this is a very important debate for the New Democratic caucus.

I am very pleased to participate in the debate on a bill that addresses as important an area as Canadians' approach to assisted reproductive technology. As we have heard throughout the debate, there are many compelling reasons to support the regulation of reproductive technology.

We are all familiar with the sensational stories about human cloning, about eggs being sold over the Internet, and about the acrimonious lawsuits over surrogacy. Last December the Raelians claimed to have successfully cloned a human being. While that claim may be unsubstantiated, it certainly shows the need for urgent action. It is but the outspoken tip of a much larger iceberg of unregulated research. We know, and I am sure all members in the House agree, that there are others around the globe who are absolutely committed to this and other dubious research objectives.

We are living in a time when the term “designer babies” has become part of the North American vocabulary. Parents are selecting the biological traits of their children. Internet sites compete in the trade of celebrity reproductive materials while countless others profit from those Canadians who are more than willing to buy access to any healthy eggs or sperm that might assist in their drive to have children. Gender selection has become topical with all sorts of new rationales being put forward in its defence.

Many of us by now are very familiar with some of the less sensational personal stories that have emerged from these technological innovations. There are stories of joy and heartbreak, as well as sacrifice and pain during infertility treatment.

Reproductive technologies have become widespread in Canada yet unfortunately, they remain beyond the reach of government regulations. Therefore, the debate on this piece of legislation remains critically important.

The question for all of us here today is, what took so long? Why did it take more than 10 years to get to the point where we are actually debating a concrete piece of legislation that may be passed through the legislative process? We all know that Liberal neglect by delaying the introduction of this legislation has allowed developments in reproductive technology to mushroom outside a regulated environment. No one more than New Democrats in the House want this situation changed.

Cloning and gender selection are areas where Canadians have expressed unqualified support for regulation for a good number of years, going back to over a decade ago and the recommendations of the Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technologies which reported in 1993. The Liberal government has had ample opportunity to move quickly to stabilize the clinical and research environments. If it was unable to come up with a strategy of its own, it could easily have thrown its support behind a private member's bill presented to the House by a member of the Bloc, a bill to ban cloning, for example, or accepted agreement among other parties to expedite certain areas to introduce some legislative standards quickly. The government chose not to. Instead it opted to plow ahead and even trampled over health committee suggestions for improving its bill.

After failing in its previous attempt at regulating reproductive technologies in 1997, the Liberal government has left us today with a no win, no choice decision, a trouble or nothing kind of proposition. As we said earlier in the debate, that is a choice we cannot make. It is a choice we refuse to make because several major issues have not been adequately dealt with in this final legislative proposition before the House of Commons. Several major issues have not been adequately dealt with that will govern the application of the research and technology that we are addressing.

I want to list some of those concerns, starting with the paramount concern for those of us in the New Democratic Party and I hope many others in this chamber, and that is the health of women. It is women's safety that remains our concern here today. From the beginning of the whole process with the Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technologies, New Democrats have been working, fighting and insisting that women's health concerns be paramount.

A colleague of mine, Dawn Black, the former NDP status of women critic, was very adamant about this point here in the House. She consulted extensively with organizations representing women from across Canada in developing recommendations for the royal commission itself. She pursued those concerns through the parliamentary process and was as disappointed as other women across the country when legislative initiatives did not come to fruition.

Dawn Black and other women across the country knew then and know today that it is women who put their health at risk by undergoing drug regimes with unsafe products. It is women who undergo the painful intrusive procedures to secure eggs for treatment or research for example. It is women who must try to make informed decisions about the pressure of societal expectations and commercial service promoters.

Many have commented on this issue. I want to reference the work done in February 2001 by Anne Rochon Ford, who wrote in a paper entitled “Biotechnology and the New Genetics, What it Means for Women's Health”:

Particularly in the area of reproductive health, women receive a disproportionate percentage of medical tests including genetic tests and treatments. Many treatments and technologies once promoted to women as safe and effective were later found to cause harm.

She listed three: the hormone drug DES; the Dalkon Shield IUD; and of course as well we all know, the Meme breast implant.

Once again women are being asked to trust and comply with new technologies such as genetic testing and gene therapies about which relatively little is known. As the author went on to say, it is like being asked to take a leap into the genetic darkness.

That point is no more relevant than today with the news on CBC radio about its investigative reporting on unsafe medical devices which are currently on the market. The problem continues. We remain concerned that the government has not taken seriously the need to protect the health and well-being of Canadians at all costs and to ensure that the drugs we take, the medical devices that are on the market, the food we eat, the interventions that are made are safe beyond a reasonable doubt.

With today's news about Canadians who depend on implanted medical devices experiencing harm and danger as a result of using those devices, we ought to be concerned again when we acknowledge the fact that Bill C-13 does not do the utmost to ensure that the health and well-being of women are protected at all costs.

We tried very hard in committee to make those changes. We were successful to some extent, but on some very major issues we were not. Although we were able to improve the significance of women's health within the bill's principles at committee, the government has stubbornly refused to make precaution the overriding principle in terms of women's health.

If, as the government claims, the bill is concerned with women's health, what better way of giving that claim leverage for enforcement purposes than to state outright that the precautionary principle is the governing principle? Yet every single time we proposed amendments to entrench precaution, to ensure that the principle was imprinted in the legislation, our efforts were defeated by Liberal members.

We wanted to require the federal government to ensure that reproductive technologies, drugs and procedures specifically, are proven safe before they are introduced, that the risks and benefits of any treatment are fully disclosed and that the evaluation of reproductive health services include women's experiences.

Let me raise another issue of concern to us with respect to Bill C-13 that we have before us. It has to do with prevention. While it is crucial to have a regulatory framework within which these activities take place or do not take place, the intent of the bill should not be the creation of an industry. Our goal should be the reduction, as much as possible, of infertility in our society today. That overriding motivation would surely require the integration of an active prevention strategy as a critical element in the role of the new agency being created under Bill C-13.

When we were working at committee on the legislation, we proposed a stronger prevention mandate. Interestingly, this was again resisted by the government that in turn insisted on a narrow approach to a very broad issue. Unfortunately that has been the pattern. This is quite consistent with the government's overall approach to industrial and environmental health. Prevention is so much better for women but treatment is so much better for industry. For the government, that is unfortunately no contest.

Let me go on to briefly talk about a fundamental concern for New Democrats in the whole legislative process and that has to do with commercialization and commodification of reproductive technologies.

Many Canadians have expressed concern from the very beginning of the formal public discussion about reproductive technologies back in the 1980s. They have expressed concerns about the government agenda being driven by powerful biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries whose primary obligation is to their shareholders and not to women's health.

There is nothing in the bill, particularly relating to the control of research results, that distinguishes between the government's position and the interests of these industries. We raised the issue of patents and the need to ensure public access to the benefit of research. For us, patenting remains a critical issue.

Patenting remains for the government a separate issue while for most Canadians, and certainly New Democrats, questions of research and the control and application of research results are inexorably linked.

There is the recent experience with Myriad, the U.S. genetics company that developed genetic cancer screening techniques which it only made available at considerable expense, clearly demonstrating the hazards ahead.

We have to deal with gene patenting issues here and now, not off in Industry Canada stakeholder discussions but as an integral part of this debate on the future pertaining to women's health and the use of assisted reproductive technologies.

To ensure public interest was primary, we focused attention on the makeup of the board directing the assisted human reproduction agency. We have repeatedly cited the need to ensure the independence of decisions and advice made by the agency in its role as chief policy advisory body to the government on reproductive technology.

When the legislation was introduced, my colleagues in the NDP and I noticed immediately and were particularly horrified to find that the government had included no conflict of interest guidelines at all. We proposed and the health committee adopted strong requirements that would avoid potential conflicts. What happened? The government introduced an amendment at report stage that cut our proposal and the teeth out of the conflict of interest provisions.

The government claims to want to keep reproductive technology out of the commercial realm. We encourage the government to put some flesh on the bones of that sentiment. We encourage the government to follow the Manitoba government's example in returning private for profit clinics to the non-profit public sphere. This bill could have set that agenda.

By leaving clinics in the private, competitive, for profit sphere the government has provided no assurance at all that some more complicated procedures may not become inaccessible to women as commercial firms drop them to keep their success rates high.

The federal government's de facto encouragement of for profit services in the recent health accord further confirms that women will be at the mercy of service decisions made according to market values in reproductive health.

The law of the marketplace has consistently failed to protect women's interests over the years. The commodification of women's bodies plays right into the hands of those who would profit. There is nothing in the bill to indicate the proactive approach to enforcement necessary to ensure women's safety. The government's under resourcing of other health monitoring is not encouraging at all.

Let me go on to the issue briefly of surrogacy because this is another area where the health committee hammered out a solid recommendation that was either rejected outright or substantially weakened by the government during report stage.

It was the committee's position that permitting commercial surrogacy arrangements would commercialize women's childbearing capacity. With government supported amendments, we are now left with a confusing mixed message that tries to accomplish two contradictory goals at the same time: banning paid surrogacy activity on the one hand, while simultaneously supporting it financially on the other hand.

In some ways other aspects of the bill have been overshadowed by the controversy surrounding research options using human stem cells. After careful and lengthy consideration, the health committee had reached a common position on stem cell research. Instead of adopting that position however, the government has decided to pass what is essentially a policy decision off to an administrative agency.

In the last minute available to me, I would like to just touch briefly on the matter of eugenics because much of the bill deals with the technological capacity which was still in the realm of science fiction a brief quarter of a century ago. The selection of genetic traits, as much as cloning, falls within this brave new world. The magnitude of these discoveries would to most Canadians beg a thoughtful and critical examination of their relationship to our traditional societal values. We have reached this critical point, however, with no government leadership around such a public evaluation.

As it stands, the bill does not clearly set out a set of guiding principles that would recognize and safeguard the value and integrity of the lives of all Canadians. It fails to clearly challenge the assumptions held by some researchers whose overall goal is to perfect future generations and eliminate certain conditions through genetic manipulation.

The concerns that have been raised by groups representing persons with disabilities about the value and contributions of all members of our society have not been met. We made constructive proposals to strengthen this aspect of the bill in committee and tried successfully to introduce an amendment at report stage. Regrettably, we have been forced to once again resort to a private member's initiative to deal with the concerns of groups representing people with disabilities.

Finally, we are at the end of a long process. In many ways our work is just beginning because provisions around the agency have been left wide open for further regulations and depend very much on government commitments in terms of appointments to the board and truly acting on the possibility of conflict of interest.

We must remain vigilant. We must remain purposeful in our deliberations to ensure that the health and well-being of women, children and families is preserved and protected throughout this process of regulating reproductive technologies.

[Réal Ménard, Bloc, Hochelaga—Maisonneuve, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. As you know, when we start the third reading debate on a bill, the first three speakers are generally allowed 40 minutes for their speech. I do not think there is enough time left for me to use my full 40 minutes.

With permission from my fellow members and the unanimous consent of the House, our colleague from the New Democratic Party could now be allowed to speak, with a 10 minute period for questions and comments. Then, with unanimous consent, the House could be adjourned thereafter.

I could use the 40 minutes I am allowed tomorrow, after oral question period, if the government intends to bring back Bill C-13.

[Rob Merrifield, Canadian Alliance, Yellowhead, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege and pleasure to rise on third reading, and give my voice to the bill one more time. We have had a number of opportunities to speak out strongly and firmly on a piece of legislation that will impact our nation in a significant way into the 21st century. I do not think we need to understate that. We must state it as clearly and strongly as we possibly can so that the people of this great nation understand the road that we are about to embark upon.

This legislation has the potential to change the ethics of a nation. It is the first time that we will approach the idea that it is okay as a nation to destroy human life for the sake of research.

In doing so, we set out that the ethic we stand on is for the greater good. If we shrink ourselves to the place where the only ethical ground that we stand on is that for the greater good we should do something, then we are on a slippery slope as a nation that will disregard the value of human life as we have seen in many different countries around the world.

It is important that we discern the intensity of the impact of this proposed legislation. After a year of draft work on this bill and after going through committee stage, report stage and third reading, which brings us to this point now, we must understand that we have tried to explain this all the way through.

We ask for the wisdom of the House that it discern clearly and carefully the actions and the voting pattern that will set this in motion or stop it, and with some wisdom throw caution to going down this road so aggressively.

Having said that, we need and have called for legislation in this area. My colleague talked about the banning of cloning, chimera, sex selection, and all the prohibitions within the bill that are important. We must ensure that happens.

However, when it comes to Bill C-13, it touches matters of a great human affair. It touches matters of life and death, and the desires of parents to conceive children. Couples are attempting to build families. That is how the bill started. The problem with the bill is that it goes beyond building families.

As my colleague has said, one in eight Canadians are having difficulty with the experience of becoming fertile and creating a child. That is where the bill started. It started with the idea that the bill should address how to assist those individuals to create a replica of themselves.

Bill C-13 touches on the hope for the treatment of debilitating diseases and conditions. It is important that we address both the ethical complexity that is so highly controversial as well as the other side, which is the whole area of whether the proposed legislation is going in the right direction with regard to the science behind where we will allow ourselves to go.

I believe that Canadians have been driven by the value of protecting human life and respecting it. Whether young or old we have an intrinsic value to respect our creator. Human life is special; it is not to be disregarded. It is not to be created for the sake of destruction. It is important that we have that concept and because of that we should respect life right from conception to natural death.

I regret the government has chosen the uncharted path of embryonic research which may lead in a direction other than human health.

Let us go back 10 years to the evolution of this piece of legislation. It started in 1993 with the royal commission and a piece of legislation came forward. Bill C-47 died on the Order Paper in 1997. It came forward again as Bill C-56 and died on the Order Paper at the prorogation of the House. Now we have Bill C-13 that we are debating.

It is important to understand that in the drafting of this legislation we did something special and unique. In a non-partisan way we had a piece of legislation that was drafted and went to committee. For nine months we listened to the greatest minds and the most informed to give us the input that they had with regard to how it could be amended and how it could be a model of legislation that would be used around the world.

We had the opportunity to have the best legislation of any nation in the world. It is for those reasons that we fought so hard to put in place some of the changes to this legislation prior to it going to committee after it was introduced.

What I find astounding is that the report that came out on the draft piece of legislation is significantly different from what we have before us today. There were many cautions put before the committee. The committee members at that time were nervous about the idea of embryonic stem cell research. The committee was explicit on how we should deal with the regulatory body that will allow or not allow certain practices to occur in the area of reproduction.

The bill we have before us seems to ignore much of the work that was done. It ignores much of the work of the witnesses who came forward and advised the committee. This is why, if we talk to many of the committee members privately, they are frustrated with a piece of legislation that has ignored the recommendations after nine months of hard, non-partisan work and nine months of truly looking at a piece of legislation that would be the best for Canadians. Canadians deserve no less. They deserve the best piece of legislation. They deserve their values to be protected. The bill falls short of that. We must be cautious when we move down this road.

I would like to spend some time on some of the things we support in the bill. It is important to state them and to understand them. It is important that if the bill falters at this stage that we go back and look at the things that we would all agree on, such as the things that are prohibited in the bill, for example, banning either reproductive or therapeutic cloning.

Cloning is an emotional issue that has been publicized in the last while. The threat or the possibility of cloning is a reality that we see coming closer and closer as the days pass. In fact, there are those who have suggested that they have cloned already.

We applaud the idea of the prohibition of reproductive or therapeutic cloning in this piece of legislation. That reflects Canadian values. If such a piece of legislation were to come forward in the House it would pass as quickly as a salary increase, in 72 hours. That is how quickly it would pass because there would be unanimous consent from every seat in the House.

The idea of animal and human hybrids; the idea of chimera, mixing animal and human; and the idea of sex selection is appalling. The idea of germ line alterations that last forever once they are created, and the idea of buying and selling embryos and paid surrogacies are all areas in this piece of legislation that we agree should be prohibited. These are things that are important and we cannot understate them. We cannot overlook that the prohibitions are in this piece of legislation and we should applaud and embrace them.

However, there is one other thing which is an important part of this legislation and that is the agency. The agency will either allow or disallow what will be carried forward in research in this whole area. It will either enforce or not enforce the things that are in this piece of legislation. It is important that we discern who the individuals are that will sit on this regulatory agency. It is important that they are men and women of character who understand the intensity of what is being asked of them in order to control this whole area as the legislation comes into being.

The other thing we need to understand is the whole idea of cloning. What is frustrating for me is that before the ink is even dry and before the bill even passes third reading, scientists are clamouring to say that therapeutic cloning should be allowed.

This goes back to my opening remarks when I said that we were on a slippery slope. We should be very cautious and careful about the legislation. Before the ink is even dry and before we even vote on the bill, the scientists are saying that somatic cell nuclear transfer or therapeutic cloning should be allowed.

Great Britain, which has been under a regulatory agency for the last decade, is now allowing therapeutic cloning. It has also allowed the creation of embryos solely for the purpose of research. If we as Canadians say that is okay, then we are on a slippery slope and we will not be able to stop.

It is actually more ethical to allow that than to place frozen embryos in storage and then thaw them because less than 5% of them go on to create what we would like to create as far as research goes. Whereas if we could get them without the freezing process, it would be more ethical to use them that way.

The next battle we would be fighting in the House is whether we should move to that stage. I suggest that we are fighting that now, even before the ink is dry on this bill. We should be very cautious as we move forward on this legislation because the slope is more slippery than most members understand.

Canadian Alliance members oppose the whole idea of cloning. It is an affront to human dignity, individuality and human rights. It is very important that we make sure it does not happen.

We felt that this legislation should have been split. A motion was brought forward by my party in committee in September 2001 asking for some legislation that would put Canada on the prohibited side of this. We asked that reproductive cloning be something that everyone would have to agree on. At that time, the Liberals deferred the vote. Since they did not want to do it, we had no legislation in that area. That is appalling. It should have been included. If the bill had been split, we would have had the needed protection in the prohibited areas. We would have had more time to deliberate and move cautiously on the areas of controlled activity. We should be very careful as we move forward on this legislation.

I would like to talk for a bit to the preamble of the bill. Clause 2 states:

the health and well-being of children born through the application of assisted human reproduction technologies must be given priority in all decisions respecting their use;

It goes on to state:

human individuality and diversity, and the integrity of the human genome, must be preserved and protected.

Those are noble and thoughtful insights that we put into the preamble of the legislation. However my concern is that as a committee we ranked how we should approach this legislation. We asked ourselves what should govern our decision-making and what should have priority.

As a committee we said that the legislation was about building families and creating life and that obviously the child born by assisted human reproduction should have number one priority. Our paramount concern was that the legislation respected and recognized their rights and protected the rights of the most vulnerable.

The second thing we considered to be an important driver in the legislation were the adults who would be participating in assisted human reproduction.

The third consideration were the researchers and physicians who would be conducting the research on assisted human reproduction.

If we had kept in mind the child first, the adult second and then the science as we went through the legislation, we would have had a different bill in place than what we have right now.

We also must recognize where we have faltered, where we have mixed these things up, where we have allowed science and parents' rights to override the rights of the child. We should reflect on those as we go through the legislation and stop it at third reading if it violates those three priorities.

The preamble of the bill recognizes the priority of the offspring but it fails the offspring in other areas. Children born through donor insemination or through donor eggs are not given the right to know their biological parents. I will return to that a little later in my presentation.

The bill's preamble does not provide an acknowledgement of human rights and respect of human life. That is another misgiving because we believe that is a value that Canadians hold near and dear. The bill is intimately connected with the creation of human life and yet there is no overarching recognition of the principle of the respect of human life. That is a great deficiency and a grave deficiency in the legislation.

With regard to research using the human embryo, Bill C-13 would permit the use of the human embryo from supposed leftovers from in vitro fertilization treatments. It would allow stem cell research and it would allow the creation of actual embryos for reproductive research. I think this is an important fault in the legislation that we should recognize right up front.

Sometimes we overlook the whole idea of creating an embryo for reproductive research. Canadian laws will now legitimize the view that human life can be created solely for the benefit of others. This obviously goes against the view that life should not be created in order to be destroyed, yet this is what the legislation would allow. It is an ethical issue and it is something that divides Canadians right down the middle. It is something we should be very cautious about allowing. Canadians are very concerned about this. I know many members in the House have received many e-mails on it. Many of their constituents are very concerned because it violates their whole value system of respect of human dignity and integrity of human life. It is great that we have legislation that can wax eloquently in its preamble about respect but then it does not follow through with that in the rest of the legislation.

Embryonic research also constitutes an objectification of human life and a life becomes a tool in which it can be manipulated or destroyed for others, even to ethical ends. This is one of the things we have to understand.

People always ask me that because I think life begins at conception therefore it is just an ethical argument, so they dismiss it. Well, let us take the ethics out of it and just ask, biologically, whether life begins at conception. I would argue, biologically, that when 23 female chromosomes from an egg and 23 chromosomes from a sperm connect and begin to grow we have the same DNA at that stage as we do when we are 80 years old or lying on our deathbed. If it does not start there, then where does it start?

Protection under law starts when we are born. A fair debate would be on the kind of protection we should allow at the embryonic stage. However whether that is life is not debatable. It is just biological. As biologists will tell us, that is where life begins.

Let us have a true debate, not on the ethics but on the reality. The reality is, that is life. Do we protect it at that stage or do we not? The legislation is very interesting because it does give some protection at that stage. It protects it after 14 days. Therefore we would have to conclude that life begins, according to the legislation, at 14 days after conception. If not, why would we protect it at that stage? Why not just keep allowing it to grow until nine months in the womb, where it is protected under law? Obviously that is a little further than most Canadians would allow it to go. Therefore, from that perspective, we have to understand where that ethical argument is, and let us be realistic about it.

The other thing that really upsets me is that we do have an alternative. We do not need to put Canadians through this dilemma. The alternative is what is happening with the non-embryonic stem cells or adult stem cells. It is a terrific study. Some of the things that have been proven possible out of the study on non-embryonic stem cells have been absolutely astounding. We can get these stem cells from the umbilical cord, from tissue, from skin and from bone marrow. Last summer a group of scientists out of Minnesota discovered that stem cells could be grown into any organ of the body

If we have an answer looking us right in the eye, it is very difficult for us as a nation to say that we should go to the embryonic stem cell. Why would we do that with our precious resources? Why would we do that when any organ that is grown out of an embryonic stem cell and then put into another individual would result in that individual being on anti-rejection drugs for the rest of the individual's life? We have to recognize that is not in the best interest of the patient either. Why would we do that when we have an alternative?

Most Canadians who have tried to take part in the debate on embryonic stem cells have failed to understand the difference between an umbilical cord stem cell, an embryonic stem cell or an adult stem cell. It is quite complex but we should make no mistake that the embryonic stem cell has the ethically charged problem.

Incidentally, the embryonic stem cell has its own problems. It is so elastic that it cannot be controlled to grow into the organ that scientists want it to grow into. They say that they need those embryos so they can trigger it appropriately. If that is true, I would say that they should carry on with their research but carry on with the research on animals, on embryos from the animals, carry on with research on the stem cell lines from the United States that have already been created and which we have imported into Canada. That would be fair. However let us move carefully and slowly, as Canadians, into the area where we would destroy human life for the sake of research.

Nonetheless, we are seeing some response and some results from the stem cells that are derived from the adults. Parkinson's patients are being cured. Leukemia is being cured. MS patients are improving. Conditions have greatly improved in the whole area of taking stem cells from the adult and using those. I think that is where Canadians' money should be placed. It is very limited. We need to use those dollars as wisely as possible if we are to create the kind of society that we want and the kind of research that is most productive for that society.

The minority report we had for the first draft of the legislation actually recommended that. The report said that we should pull back for a three year period to allow the scientists to continue their research on the adult or non-embryonic side and see where that goes. The report also said that we should continue with animal research on even the stem cell lines from the embryo but that at this stage we should not move to the place where the scientists could move the ethical guidelines, where we changed the line in the sand to as far as what we as a nation would find it appropriate to go.

It is interesting that the legislation uses the word “necessary”. It says that the only way we should be able to touch the embryo is if it is deemed necessary. In saying that, one would think that it at least gives the agency, which would be validated to control this activity, an indication that it should only go there if it is necessary. Yet, in the definitions we do not define “necessary”. When I asked what the word “necessary” meant to the scientists, they could not define what would not be necessary. In doing that, it indicates that everything would be necessary.

The health committee originally was very nervous about this so we put it in a different way. We said that if they were to go there then they could only go there if there were no other category of biological material that could be used for the purpose of that research. If they could prove that to the agency, only then should it be allowed. Even with that, there was a strong debate in the health committee and much nervousness in even allowing it to go to that point.

This entire area is difficult when we see how loosely this is worded and when we see that we have legislation that perhaps is taking us down the wrong road, the wrong road maybe with the right intent. Maybe we think that by doing it we can save some lives in the long run. I would suggest that has yet to be proven and until it has been proven we should not go there.

My biggest frustration is that for this piece of legislation the committee that was asked to report on it was not listened to. We reported on it and I believe we did so in a very non-partisan and very good way, putting some safeguards in place in the legislation. The health minister decided to ignore that. It gets even worse if we talk about some of the amendments made here last week with regard to allowing surrogacy. I will talk about that later.

When we talk about the regulatory agency and how important it is, in reality that is the most important piece of this legislation. If we get this wrong, we get it wrong for the 21st century. If we get it right, we then put in place something that will garner the confidence of a nation in this entire area. It is very important that we look at the agency, at how it is made up and how it is controlled.

When we look at the legislation, we see that it allows the Minister of Health sweeping control, complete and total control, of that agency. Because of this legislation, the minister can have sweeping control of this agency and I am not even speaking of the current minister but of any minister who comes along in the future. Because of this, it is very dangerous legislation. In fact, clause 25 would allow the minister to give any policy direction she would like to the agency, and the agency without question must follow it. That is what clause 25 states. I believe that clause 25 should be absolutely and completely removed from the legislation because it goes against anything that we would see as being wise.

The agency must be answerable to Parliament. It should not necessarily be answerable to a minister of health and her or his will. The agency has to recognize that it is important to have the wisest individuals in that agency. In fact, the health committee said that we should have men and women of wisdom, men and women of judgment. We do not care whether they are all women or all men; I do not. What is important is that they are men or women of wisdom and judgment who are not impacted by monetary gain, who do not have a conflict of interest, and who are not driven by a certain constituency and controlled by the scientists or the special interest groups. They have to be outside that. They have to be above that.

In this legislation we had the opportunity to make that possible and I think we have failed on that count. That is what I would see as the largest failure of the legislation. How terrible it is when we had such a golden opportunity to get it right and we got it so wrong. When this agency is struck, I hope that the Minister of Health and the Prime Minister at the time will reflect on the wisdom of the committee originally and will reflect on who the personalities are that they place on this agency. It is absolutely critical that we get this right, in spite of the legislation, if it goes through the way it is now.

Donor anonymity is another area in the legislation and we have totally blown it. Although the agency would hold the information for donor identity, a child conceived through donor insemination or donor eggs would have no right to know the identity of the parent unless written consent were given.

Let us go back to the priorities I mentioned earlier. The priority should be the child, and then the parent, and then the scientists. This gets it wrong. This allows the parents to override the will of the children in knowing their identity. That is getting it wrong. Do we realize how many offspring this would impact? It is very significant. In Canada right now we have somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 children born each year through donor insemination. That is a small community or a small village in many of our constituencies. That is how many are born not knowing where they came from. They have no opportunity to know unless they have consent.

When we look at the history of individuals who donate semen, we see that a good amount of the donations, almost 50% or more, are coming from the United States. Sometimes we have no idea of where they come from. We have no way of knowing. Sometimes they come from prisons, for goodness' sake. We need to look carefully at this whole area. The legislation fails in this. It fails to force individuals to allow their history to be given to the child who is born through donor insemination.

This was a very difficult issue at committee. In fact, it came to a vote and, if I remember it right, the vote was six to five. All the committee members were not there that day. It was a six to five vote. That is how close it was. We voted the wrong way. That was a terrible error. It was a terrible mistake that was not corrected at report stage and it should have been. It needs to be. What a golden opportunity it would have been to do what is right for so many if such a little change could have taken place.

One of the other things that upsets me is the grandfathering of the governor in council's exemption in clause 71. It allows the grandfathering of controlled activities until the day it is fixed by the regulations. Unfortunately, when we allow that sort of thing to go into the regulations, we really have created a clause that we could call a get out of jail free clause. It allows the scientists to actually go in a kind of free will and totally uncontrolled way into the whole area of using these leftover embryos before the legislation is actually enacted, because there is no grandfathering clause in it. Because of that, we will see a great rush to take the embryos that are there now and do research on them before the legislation and the controlling agency are in place. The agency would handle the controls. Because of that, this is a grave error in the legislation and the scientists are just sitting back waiting to make this happen.

In fact I was talking to one of the scientists the other day who said, “This is already in place. We are already starting on April 1”. That is today. The Canadian Institutes of Health Research said it will not allow research in this area until today. Does this mean that tomorrow it starts? Yes, this means that tomorrow it starts. That is a terrible mistake. This legislation has sent the wrong message to our scientists. To allow this before the legislation and the regulations are even in place is very unfortunate.

The whole idea of chimera is something that is repugnant to most individuals. That is about combining humans and animals. In regard to chimera, the legislation talks about the human embryo being implanted with an animal cell, but it does not talk about the reverse. We tried to bring forward an amendment at report stage to change this, to tighten it, because it does not talk about an animal embryo being implanted with human cells. Because of that, it is just as repugnant, and actually more so, and yet the legislation is silent in that area.

Some things should be in this legislation and are not. Why not? If we are to bring forward legislation, let us deal with it completely. We know that we have had enough time, but what we have not had is the appropriate will on the part of the minister and her department to deal with it. That is regrettable.

Now I would like to talk about the whole idea of surrogacy. Allowing the individual who is to be a surrogate to be compensated for loss of work is detestable. It will allow the commodification of the womb. It is something that we have been very nervous about from the very beginning. It is one thing that on every side, whether it was the Liberal individuals at committee, the NDP or ourselves, the Canadian Alliance, we all found repugnant, yet we saw the motion to allow it pass in the House last week. It is a terrible mistake. It will vault us into the commodification of human life beyond anything we have ever seen.

We will find it becoming trendy for an individual who is a movie star to get a surrogate and some sperm from a superstar or a super-athlete and create a fashionable individual. Money would not be an object. It lends new meaning to the whole idea of prostitution. It goes beyond that.

This is a deplorable thing that we are now allowing in Canada. It should be looked at again. It is absolutely incredible that the amendment was allowed to pass last week in the House. I do not believe that most of the members in the House understood what they were voting on. That is very shameful. We need to go back and re-examine it so that they understand what is actually in the legislation. I know that the members in this place are honourable and I know that this does not reflect Canadian values in any way. So why would we allow it? I really have to ask myself that. I know individuals from all sides of the House and I know that they did not understand this completely or they would not have voted that way on the amendment.

We are calling for a free vote in the House on this legislation. That is very important. It is important that on all sides we are able to vote the will of our conscience and the will of our constituents. That is the way it should be on every piece of legislation, but on this one in particular. We are calling for this because it is very important. We should look at how important this legislation is to the future of Canada and to where we should go as individuals. I cannot imagine being forced to vote for something that would have such ethical repercussions without clearly being able to vote our conscience. I cannot imagine being whipped into voting in this area on something with which we and our constituents disagree.

I would certainly challenge members to go back to their constituents to try to discern exactly where Canadians are, but to do it in a way that informs them, to do it in such a way that they will understand the differences in umbilical cord stem cells, embryonic stem cells and non-embryonic stem cells taken from bone marrow, skin, blood or other areas. It is complex, I know, but I would challenge every member of the House to do his or her homework and to truly discern what is appropriate for Canada as we look at this.

The bill is critically flawed. It sets us on a path we should not be on. I will be recommending that the Canadian Alliance vote against the legislation. It should not go forward the way it is. It is flawed to the point that it should not be accepted. It would be a terrible thing for Canadians to be pushed without their knowledge into something in this area that is so ethically charged. I do not believe that the debate has reached most Canadians so that they understand it well enough. That is a shame.

I have had people from the diabetes association, the Parkinson's association and others in my office. These are well meaning people who would do anything to save their loved ones or to save themselves. Unfortunately, embryonic stem cells have not been proven to be their answer. Adult stem cells have and that is where we should go. That is where we should be putting our energies and our efforts.

The way ahead is clear if we stick to our principles. This legislation should put the child first, followed by the parent and then the science. If we were to keep that straight, we would change much that is in here. Also, if we were to understand that this changes the ethics of a nation and that we should be careful where we go in that area, we would also be very cautious about moving in this direction. That is where we should go.

Because I am so concerned, I have absorbed myself in this piece of legislation for the last two years. We have had some of the brightest minds give us their wisdom and their input. With all my energy I have tried to impress upon the House that we should be cautious in going down this road and that we should change the bill to make it the best in Canada. We really should consider doing exactly that, because it has not been done to this stage.

Now that we are at third reading, it is important that I at least encourage the House to do one more thing, which is to amend the bill. I would like to put forward a motion. I move:

That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following thereafter:

Bill C-13, an act respecting assisted human reproduction, be not now read a third time, but be referred back to the Standing Committee on Health for the purpose of reconsidering clause 18 with the view to allow children born through donor eggs or sperm to know the identity of their biological parents.

I respectfully submit this amendment, Mr. Speaker.

[Jeannot Castonguay, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health]

Mr. Speaker, it is obviously a pleasure for me to speak today on Bill C-13, An Act respecting assisted human reproduction. This bill has been long awaited in Canada. All the members and all Canadians know that this bill has been long awaited. It is truly a delight for me to speak on this subject.

In its current form, Bill C-13 reflects the contribution of numerous groups and individuals, including the members of the Standing Committee on Health, whom I want to thank for the enormous amount of work they did on this bill. It was not always easy. There were many important aspects. I believe that everyone devoted time and effort and, today, the bill is better for it. I would also like to mention the contribution of many of the members of this House.

There is no doubt that this bill today is different from the legislative proposals presented to the Standing Committee on Health almost two years ago.

Significant changes have been made since the bill was introduced last spring. The greatest change is the power to establish the assisted human reproduction agency of Canada.

However, there are also differences in many of the details of the bill, such as the Parliamentary review of regulations, the anti-discrimination clause and the firm rejection of any reimbursement of expenditures. As we all know, the bill will fill a legislative void.

We know that the current situation has serious consequences not only for infertile couples and Canadians born through assisted human reproductive technologies, but also for society as a whole. Having recognized these consequences, Canadians have clearly stated that they want the federal government to show leadership in this area.

It is up to us to protect the health and security of Canadians who are turning to assisted human reproduction technologies to help them build families. It is also up to us to follow up on concerns that science and technology should not be able to continue to evolve without regulation.

The bill also recognizes that approximately one in four Canadian couples has to deal with infertility, and this figure is increasing. These couples must overcome a fundamental obstacle to one of the most human wishes, that of having a family. Assisted human reproduction technologies offer the chance to overcome this obstacle.

The bill will be a significant development for people who use these technologies in the hope of conceiving a child. It will ensure that they can do so knowing that their health, safety and privacy are protected. It will ensure they are not discriminated against.

Having a child is a major decision for anybody. But those who use assisted reproductive technologies are faced with added difficulties requiring they ask themselves some pointed questions. Is the technology safe? What are the chances of success?

This is why informed consent is a key element of the bill. To make an informed decision on assisted reproductive technologies, whether we are directly involved or not, we need tools.

Bill C-13 puts great emphasis on the availability of reliable information on assisted reproductive technologies. It recognizes how important it is to keep Canadians informed of the possible causes of infertility, prevention measures and treatment.

Couples who opt for in vitro fertilization or other forms of assisted reproductive technologies must have reliable information on the technology and treatment they choose. Bill C-13 will make sure clinics provide this kind of information.

Moreover, the agency established under Bill C-13 will have the power to monitor and evaluate new developments in Canada and abroad. It will become a known and informed source of reliable information for those considering using assisted reproductive technologies in Canada.

Couples should have access to professional help to evaluate the psychological, emotional and social stress they and their children might face.

So Bill C-13 attaches a great deal of importance to counselling, so much so that it has generated a considerable amount of interest for many members.

Although it is true that protecting the health and safety of Canadians who are seeking to start a family is at the very core of Bill C-13, there are still other important aspects to it.

Recent events have drawn the world's attention to the more sombre aspects of assisted reproduction. For many people, the necessity for such a bill has been crystallized by the claims, false though they may be, that a cloned baby was born prior to last Christmas. The spectre of that possibility was of huge concern to us all.

As a society, we have a duty to set out in legislation what we will accept and what we will not. That is precisely what Bill C-13 does. Without it, cloning will continue to be legal in this country.

The use of cloning techniques to produce a child is deplorable to Canadians. Health and safety issues aside, cloning for reproductive purposes is ethically and morally repugnant.

The deliberate creation of genetically identical humans is contrary to human dignity and to diversity. It blurs the distinctions between reproduction and production.

It virtually ignores the well-being of the cloned child. Any child born as the result of cloning techniques would have to cope with unprecedented psychological, social and emotional challenges relating to identity issues.

Cloning is not, however, the only unacceptable aspect of assisted reproductive technologies. Bill C-13 makes a number of other practices illegal as well, practices which Canadians simply will not accept, including gender selection for other than health reasons, the commercialization of reproduction, and the creation of animal-human chimera.

Clearly, the problems addressed by Bill C-13 are profound ones. We therefore consider Bill C-13 to represent a balanced approach.

The path to that balanced approach was not an easy one, but I feel that, overall, the bill establishes a very solid framework, a framework that will enable us to address the rapidly evolving technologies and the changes in public opinion.

I will cite the example of the approach the bill takes to donor identification. I recognize the valid concerns of those who would like to see donor identity disclosure made mandatory.

I firmly believe that Bill C-13 marks a major step forward. Let me be perfectly clear: under this bill, the identity of donors may be disclosed provided consent was given.

At present, the many Canadian descendants of donors are denied access to the most basic genetic and medical information about their genetic parents. Bill C-13 will ensure that future Canadians conceived with donated gametes have full access to the detailed medical and genetic background of the donor.

However, information from which the identity of the donor could be inferred will remain with the agency. This would mean that, in a medical emergency such as a bone marrow transplant, a medical practitioner will be able to contact the donor in confidence.

In addition, we cannot ignore the fact that, to date, most provinces and territories have not clarified the status of donors in family law. This means, for instance, that identified donors could possibly be asked to support a child or could have claims against their estate made by genetic descendants of theirs.

The international experience seems to indicate that for a system based on the mandatory identification of donors to work, legal protections must be provided.

This bill could well be a catalyst for such a legal clarification in Canada. Parliamentarians may therefore want to review this issue, as part of the mandatory review of Bill C-13.

Another area where we have achieved an appropriate balance is that of research on surplus embryos. Given current scientific and technological capabilities, surplus embryos are a virtually unavoidable result of in vitro fertilization.

Therefore, as legislators, we have a duty to establish parameters regarding the fate of these embryos. Bill C-13 will ensure that, if a couple decides to donate an embryo for research purposes rather than simply have it destroyed, as is often the case now, the procedures relating to this embryo will be conducted in compliance with the rules of ethics and with the values of our society. Again, a balance has been achieved.

I want to reiterate to the House that, without Bill C-13, there is no legislation governing the fate of surplus embryos. There are no rules that are authorized by the legislation and that govern research on embryos.

It is important to point out that Bill C-13 will make it easier for parliamentarians, provincial and territorial partners, stakeholders and Canadians to make a commitment. The act establishes a process that will allow Canadians to address, on an ongoing basis, complex issues that surface quickly.

Parliament can legally conduct a comprehensive review of this legislation and, in the meantime, it will review all the regulations and it will receive reports on the full performance of the agency.

The structure of the assisted human reproduction agency of Canada owes much to the members of this House. As recommended by the Standing Committee on Health, the agency will be at arm's length from Heath Canada and will be governed by a board of directors reporting directly to the health minister.

The agency will aim for the greatest transparency possible, while ensuring that privacy rights are upheld.

The board members will come from a wide variety of backgrounds. They will each bring their unique expertise to the board. There is however one issue on which we will be adamant. No member will represent a specific organization or sector. Instead, the board members will work together in the best interests of all Canadians.

Lastly, let me quote the wise words of Louis Pasteur, the man who unlocked the mysteries of rabies and anthrax and was responsible for laying the groundwork on which much of modern science is based.

Pasteur said, and I quote, “Chance favors the prepared mind”. Bill C-13 sets up the framework that will prepare us, as a society—and as legislators—to assess and follow up on a variety of scientific discoveries and ethical challenges, now and in the years to come.

The bill now before the House might not solve all of the ethical dilemmas related to new technology. Some of these ethical issues go way beyond the scope of the bill. But the bill does provide for a balanced approach, a reasonable and reasoned approach. It is a global approach which is based on the experience and the best practices of countries the world over, but still remains our very own.

It is a truly Canadian approach that will help us meet the challenges of the new century.

[Bill Graham, Liberal, for the Minister of Health]

moved that Bill C-13, An Act respecting assisted human reproduction, be read the third time and passed.