Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech and for all of the information she has provided to us concerning the new reproductive technologies and Bill C-47.
I would now like to make some comments and ask her a question.
First of all,I would like to give a quick review of what has led up to Bill C-47. As you know, in 1977 a group of feminists put pressure on the government for the creation of a royal commission. Twelve years later, in a throne speech, the promise of this famous commission was made, and the Baird Commission was born.
In 1993, the Baird Commission tabled its final report. There were 40,000 witnesses heard, and 300 researchers provided us with their research data. This cost $30 million dollars in total, and lasted two years longer than planned. In other words, they took four years to deliberate and to come up with 293 recommendations.
I would like to make one clarification. The entire inquiry went on without consulting those in the best position to respond to the needs of the public, that is the provinces, the provincial ministers of health. Not one province was consulted by the Baird Commission about these new technologies, they were left on the sidelines, not asked if they had any recommendations to make to us, totally ignored.
The result is a report rather similar to the main thrust of Great Britain's Warnock report. As you know, Great Britain's federation is not in the least like ours. Its provinces do not have the same powers as ours do at this time. This report, therefore, bears no relevance to the needs and demands of our provinces.
While this report urging the government to introduce a bill was tabled in 1993, a decision was made to impose a voluntary moratorium in July 1995 because some of the latest developments in reproductive technologies were totally unethical.
Can you tell me what a voluntary moratorium means when researchers and scientists are now involved in cloning and producing human-animal hybrids? There is a voluntary moratorium in effect. It should be pointed out that experts and researchers reacted to this voluntary moratorium with complete indifference. It was a failure, it did not make any sense.
In June 1996, the minister tabled a bill. Although measures in this area have been demanded for 20 years, the bill that was tabled is not only incomplete and impossible to understand, but it also ignores provincial needs under the Constitution, because the provinces are responsible for providing health care services.
This bill criminalizes certain activities without amending the Criminal Code. This makes it a parallel law allowing the federal government to impose national standards. And this is what the
government does by implementing the bill in three stages. First, it prohibits certain procedures, which we agree should be criminalized although we feel the government should not interfere in areas like health care. According to the Constitution, the provinces have jurisdiction over health care.
The government is quietly putting forward a minor parallel bill in order to centralize even further. I will give a concrete example: the proposed national agency, which will impose national standards and be in charge of controlling and monitoring activities.
The bill also provides that the minister reserves the right to make appointments to a supposedly distinct, independent agency, but all the administrators in this agency will be appointed by the minister. You may not see things the way I do, but if this is not the ultimate in centralization, I do not know what it is.
Furthermore, some of the clauses in this bill are rather vague. Even the title contains an inconsistency between the French and the English text: the phrase "manipulation génétique" in the French version is more restrictive than the words used in English.
In closing, I would ask my colleague from Québec to elaborate on clause 5, just to show you how vague and confusing the clauses can be.