Organ Donor Registry Act

An Act to establish the Pan-Canadian Organ Donor Registry and to coordinate and promote organ donation throughout Canada

This bill was last introduced in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session, which ended in August 2015.

This bill was previously introduced in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session.

Sponsor

Malcolm Allen  NDP

Introduced as a private member’s bill. (These don’t often become law.)

Status

Outside the Order of Precedence (a private member's bill that hasn't yet won the draw that determines which private member's bills can be debated), as of Feb. 27, 2013
(This bill did not become law.)

Summary

This is from the published bill. The Library of Parliament often publishes better independent summaries.

The purpose of this enactment is to establish the Pan-Canadian Organ Donor Registry. The Registry may consist of a system that links existing data and may be established partly or entirely in electronic format. The Registry is to be administered by a chief executive officer known as the Registrar of the Organ Donors Registry.
The enactment requires the Registrar to consult with the provinces in order to bring about sufficient conformity in provincial human organ donation legislation to allow the Registry to operate.
The Minister may enter into agreements with the provinces to allow them to participate in the Registry if they have sufficiently conforming legislation. The enactment provides for confidentiality and mandates an annual report.
The enactment will facilitate the establishment of a national information exchange on organ donation between provinces.

Elsewhere

All sorts of information on this bill is available at LEGISinfo, an excellent resource from the Library of Parliament. You can also read the full text of the bill.

Organ Donor Registry ActRoutine Proceedings

February 27th, 2013 / 3:20 p.m.
See context

NDP

Malcolm Allen NDP Welland, ON

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-477, An Act to establish the Pan-Canadian Organ Donor Registry and to coordinate and promote organ donation throughout Canada.

Mr. Speaker, there is an absolute need for a national donor registry right across the country. There are a number of provinces that do not have donor registries at all. This would combine all that information so folks would not have to wait for donors.

Now there are literally 4,000 transplant recipients across the country waiting for an organ donor. In some cases, for certain types of donors, 80% of that donor tissue is coming from the United States. This would rectify the issue. Whether folks lived on the Atlantic coast, the Pacific coast or the Arctic coast, they would be on a registry and would get matched. Then we would not see the issue of donors who wished to give that material not have it get to the appropriate recipient simply because the information was not there. The bill is about that.

I would point out that the Canadian Blood Services supports it. The Canadian Transplant Association has also said there is need for this as a bigger picture of how to do donor transplants across the country. I would appreciate the support of the House.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)