Thank you.
Good afternoon, honourable members.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to appear before this committee as a witness and as a sponsor of Bill S-223, an act to amend the Criminal Code and the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (trafficking in human organs).
Bill S-223 proposes to strengthen Canada's response to organ trafficking by creating additional Criminal Code offences in relation to such conduct and extends extraterritorial jurisdiction over the new offences. It also seeks to amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to provide that a permanent resident or foreign national is inadmissible to Canada if the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration finds that they have engaged in trafficking of human organs.
Currently there are no laws in Canada banning Canadians from travelling abroad, purchasing organs for transplantation and returning to Canada. This is shameful, especially when we have joined most of the world in condemning the sale of organs and transplant tourism.
Over 100 countries, including the United Kingdom, Norway and Portugal, have passed legislation banning the trade of organs. Additionally, several countries have responded with legislation strengthening existing laws that ban organ trafficking and sales. There are a number of governmental and professional bodies with initiatives to regulate domestic and international organ transplantation and tackle organ trafficking, including, for example, the Council of Europe Convention against Trafficking in Human Organs.
In 2012, the World Health Organization claimed that an illegal organ was sold every hour. Overall, the number of illegal transplants worldwide is believed to be around 10,000 a year. It is important to note that this is a conservative number, as many illegal organ sales remain unreported.
Despite our inability to eradicate human rights violations around the world, we can enact change at home. It is entirely within our power to avoid complicity with transplant tourism within our own borders.
Sadly, an illegal organ transplant is not a lifeline for Canadians needing a vital organ. Instead, the recipient can often suffer from surgical complications, infections and poorer outcomes overall. These patients experience loss of the organ and death at higher rates than domestic organ transplant recipients.
Despite the growing body of information on the ramifications of transplant tourism, Canadians continue to travel abroad for commercial organ transplants. Doctors have reported that three to five people a year still arrive at St. Michael's Hospital having obtained a kidney in countries such as China, Pakistan or India. St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver also reports seeing three to five returning organ tourists a year.
A study on the clinical outcomes of patients treated at an Ontario transplant centre after receiving organs through commercial transactions abroad found that most of the patients needed follow-up care on an urgent basis and some required lengthy hospital stays. This not only puts Canadian citizens at risk, but also contributes to burdening our already-struggling health care system.
To make matters worse, my entire allotted speaking time could be spent recounting story after story of victim organ donors, such as the missing six-year-old boy who was found alone in a field crying, with both of his eyes removed, presumably for their corneas. There was the young girl who was kidnapped and taken to another country for the sole purpose of harvesting her organs. There was the group of terrified women and men who were found locked inside an apartment, being held through deception and threats, waiting to be taken to a clinic to unwillingly have a kidney removed.
As a prosecutor in the Kosovo case said that organ trafficking is “the exploitation of the poor, the indigent, the vulnerable and the marginalized in our society”. He said that the recipients of those organs are wealthy, influential citizens from foreign countries and largely western countries, who should be held criminally responsible.
Trafficking in human organs is indeed a cruel harvest of the poor.
Thank you.