Bill C-350 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (trafficking and transplanting human organs and other body parts)

This enactment amends the Criminal Code to provide for the imposition of penal sanctions for persons who, in Canada or outside Canada, are knowingly involved in the medical transplant of human organs or other body parts obtained or acquired as a consequence of a direct or indirect financial transaction or without the donor’s consent. It also amends the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to impose sanctions on individuals in respect of whom there are reasonable grounds to believe that they were engaged in the trafficking and transplanting of human organs or other body parts by providing that they are inadmissible for the purposes of entering or remaining in Canada.

Human Organ Trafficking

[John Brassard, Conservative, Barrie—Innisfil, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to rise today to present a petition with numerous names on it. There are currently two bills before Parliament proposing to impede the trafficking of human organs obtained without consent or as a result of financial transactions, Bill C-350 in the House of Commons and Bill S-240 in the Senate. It gives me great pleasure to present this petition on behalf of those who signed it.

National Security Act, 2017

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, let me be very clear. My party and I are very much opposed to torture. We go further than that. We take a very strong line against other countries in challenging them on human rights abuses, to a degree that I do not think we see from the current government.

For example, let me take this opportunity to shamelessly plug my own private member's bill, Bill C-350. It would, for the first time, make it a criminal offence for a Canadian to receive an organ that has been harvested from a person without his or her consent. A similar bill, Bill S-240, is working its way through the Senate and will likely come to this chamber before my private member's bill.

I suspect that my friends in the NDP will have no problem supporting either of those bills, but we have yet to hear from the government as to where it stands on this. Therefore, there are many issues around torture and fundamental human rights where we need to see some progress. I hope we will see support on those pieces of legislation dealing with organ harvesting, which is a form of torture.

The government has not yet signalled one way or the other how it is going to vote, which is interesting. It should be an easy, clear-cut issue. However, sometimes the things we think are easy and clear-cut do not seem as clear-cut from that side. Nonetheless, I am hopeful there is a consensus here that torture is totally unacceptable, and that we need to take the steps we can to address it.

Falun Gong

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am tabling a petition today with respect to an issue raised in my private member's bill, Bill C-350, to create an opportunity for the House to do more to combat forced organ harvesting around the world. It is the same bill that was originally proposed by Irwin Cotler in a previous parliament. Therefore, I hope Bill C-350 will have widespread support.

The petition specifically calls to the attention of the House the issues of human rights abuse in China, and a number of issues affecting Falun Gong practitioners, particularly, the mass murder of innocent Falun Gong practitioners and the harvesting of their organs. This is an issue that Canada and the rest of the international community need to do more to combat.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to table a petition dealing with human rights in China.

John McCallum, Canada's ambassador to China said that Canada has more in common with China than with the United States. These petitioners know better. They highlight that 13 family members of Canadians, including Canadian citizen Ms. Qian Sun and Canadian citizen applicant Ms. Aiyun He, are illegally incarcerated in China due to their spiritual beliefs in Falun Gong, also Falun Dafa. They highlight other facts about this persecution.

The petitioners call on Parliament and the government to call on Chinese officials to immediately end the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners and release all prisoners of conscience, including Canadian citizens and their family members, and to take every opportunity to establish measures to investigate the Chinese regime's harvesting of innocent people for their organs. We have a private member's bill on that as well, Bill C-350.

Justice

[Marco Mendicino, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise this evening to discuss private member's Bill C-350, an act to amend the Criminal Code and the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (trafficking and transplanting human organs and other body parts), which was introduced by the hon. member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan on April 10, 2017.

This bill raises some complex legal and social policy issues. I want to point out that the House has contemplated these issues a number of times in the past decade. To be specific, a very similar proposal was introduced in the House on February 5, 2008, with Bill C-500, and again on May 7, 2009, with Bill C-381. A virtually identical proposal, Bill C-561, was introduced on December 6, 2013.

Our government condemns the underground trafficking of human organs, which so often victimizes vulnerable people in developing countries and under totalitarian regimes. There have been disturbing reports, as has been mentioned by my hon. colleague, of organ harvesting operations in recent years, all of which are extremely troubling. While the actual transplanting of illicitly obtained organs does not appear to be occurring within Canada's borders, we know that some Canadians have gone abroad to purchase life-saving organs due to a global shortage in organs for legitimate transplantation purposes. This practice is sometimes referred to as transplant tourism.

Bill C-350 proposes to create a number of new Criminal Code offences that would criminalize most people involved in the illicit trafficking of organs. The bill places particular emphasis on the recipients of illicitly obtained organs and would also criminalize those who assist purchasers, medical practitioners who take part in the transplantation of illicitly obtained organs, and any intermediaries who facilitate the transplantation. Those who sell their own organs are the only players who would not be directly criminalized, likely due to their vulnerability. The bill would allow Canada to extend extraterritorial jurisdiction where a Canadian citizen or permanent resident of Canada commits any of these offences abroad.

Bill C-350 also proposes regulatory reforms that would require the establishment of a specific Canadian entity to monitor legitimate transplantations. It would require medical practitioners who examine a person who has had an organ transplanted to report the identity of that person as well as other health information to this proposed new entity. As part of this regulatory regime, the bill would impose a duty on the person who receives an organ to obtain a certificate establishing that it was donated and not purchased.

Currently in Canada, organ trafficking is prohibited by Criminal Code assault laws, given that removal of an organ without the informed consent of the patient constitutes aggravated assault. The Criminal Code provisions regarding accomplices and accessories after the fact also apply. In addition, the Criminal Code prohibits human trafficking under section 279.01, a related but distinct form of criminal conduct. The human trafficking offences can be enforced extraterritorially, but the assault offences cannot. Provincial and territorial regulatory laws governing legitimate organ transplantation also apply. They require informed and voluntary consent on the part of the donor and prohibit buying and selling organs. Transplanting organs outside of this regulatory framework constitutes a regulatory offence. Regulatory offences are generally punishable by a fine and/or a maximum of six months' imprisonment and cannot be enforced extraterritorially.

Basically, Bill C-350 would—

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to rise to defend my private member's bill, Bill C-350, a bill which would combat forced organ harvesting.

As many members know, there are certain countries where organs are taken from people without their consent. Sometimes these organs are cut out of a person while he or she is still living and without anaesthetics, screaming in pain as the person's body is cut apart. In many cases, organ harvesting is a form of further abuse, targeting members of persecuted religious minorities.

After more than 10 years of research, two Canadian lawyers, David Matas and David Kilgour, along with investigative journalist Ethan Gutmann, released a report which estimated that between 60,000 and 100,000 organs are being transplanted in Chinese hospitals every year, with the source for most of those organs being prisoners of conscience, primarily Falun Gong practitioners. This figure is much larger than the 10,000 the Chinese government has produced in its attempt, unfortunately, to cover up this gross violation of fundamental human rights.

Transplantation in China is a booming industry. The Chinese government has invested huge amounts of money into new buildings, new staff, and research and training in transplants. Given this massive capital establishment coupled with the high volume of transplants, the transplantation industry in China is built on not just the ready supply of available organs in the present, but also on an expectation of an indefinite supply of organs for the future. As such, we should greet claims by the regime that this practice has ended with severe skepticism.

In Canada right now, some members might be surprised to know that there is no law preventing Canadian citizens from going abroad, acquiring an organ which they know or which they should know has been taken without consent, and then coming back. This is a gaping hole, a case where the law has not kept up with emerging realities. Right now, there is no law preventing Canadians from participating in or benefiting from this immoral use of human organs from involuntary organ harvesting.

I believe, as I have said many times, that Canada needs to be vocal in standing up for international human rights, and in particular for the rights of persecuted minorities. Even above that, Canada needs legislation which would define in Canadian law our opposition to involuntary organ harvesting in cases where it comes back to our shores. This really is a no-brainer and it should be a non-partisan issue.

In previous Parliaments a number of MPs have introduced bills aimed at countering forced organ harvesting, but unfortunately, they have not made it through the legislative process.

Bill C-350, which I have proposed, is the same bill as Bill C-561 put forward by former Liberal justice minister Irwin Cotler. David Kilgour, who I mentioned earlier, is also a former Liberal and Progressive Conservative MP. Credit is also due to the current member for Etobicoke Centre, who I know cares very much about this issue, who has seconded my bill, and who put forward a similar bill in a previous Parliament. It has been a pleasure working with him.

This legislation has always been a good idea, but it is particularly needed right now. Given escalating human rights problems around the world, and given the emphasis this government is putting on Canada's relationship with China, there is a real urgency to move forward with this kind of basic human rights legislation.

Some people have asked me how often it actually happens that Canadians go oversees to get organs. While it is difficult to know the exact numbers, the report done by Kilgour and Matas found that of three Canadian hospital studies, they knew of 100 Canadians who had gone to China for organ transplants in the last three years. Those are some relatively significant numbers, which certainly have had a major impact on those political prisoners of conscience who are affected by this.

Further, I will mention that Israel, Spain, and Taiwan have all taken similar steps as are proposed by this bill. If Taiwan, which is very close to and much more economically linked with China, can take this step, then certainly we can as well.

I did not write this bill. I recognize the great work done on this issue by many people--Liberals, Conservatives, and New Democrats--but now it is time for us to take the football to the end zone. Notwithstanding any of the potential sensitivities, I believe that this needs to be done in this Parliament. It is an issue of fundamental human rights, so let us move this forward.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, this week I introduced Bill C-350, a bill that is identical to Bill C-561, which had been put forward by the former Liberal justice minister Irwin Cotler. This is good, non-partisan legislation to combat forced organ harvesting, people being killed and having their organs taken.

Will the Liberals do the right thing, regardless of the opinion of the Chinese government, and support this life-saving bill?