Mr. Speaker, listening to the hon. member for Mercier, one can see that she has gotten a reaction from the other side, the government side. When there is that kind of reaction, it is because there is some uncertainty as to what is being advanced.
As a member of the Standing Committee on Health, I am pleased to speak during this debate on the new reproductive technologies, and the commercial operations-I must call them for what they are-commercial operations relating to human reproduction.
Before going any further, I would like to call attention to the work of the two official opposition critics who have spoken out in turn against the Liberal government in this matter. I refer, of course, to the work of the present critic, the hon. member for Drummond, and that of the hon. member for Laval-Centre. Since our arrival here, this has been a part of the debate in the House of Commons.
Let us recall what the hon. member for Mercier has already mentioned: that this amendment to the Criminal Code has been wished for and called for since 1977. There was the Baird Commission, created in 1989. The commission members produced four years worth of studies, deliberations and reports. Perhaps we ought to point out that there were some little problems within this commission, some resignations by commission members. It was pretty costly, I will not say very costly, but pretty costly, at $28 million.
Mind you, the commission heard 40,000 witnesses; there are not a lot of precedents for this. No provincial government, at least none in Quebec, has ever heard so many witnesses. They heard many, many people. The commission eventually delivered close to 300 recommendations and finally, in the fall of 1993, a huge, 1,435-page report.
Two years passed between 1993 and July 1995. The fall of 1993 coincided with the election of the Liberal Party, which now forms the government. During those two years, nothing much happened. Some statements were made but nothing of any consequence happened. In the summer of 1995, there was this so-called voluntary moratorium. A voluntary moratorium.
When a problem is as important as this one, the word "voluntary" raises a number of questions.
In fact, a number of questions were raised in the House, and two ministers provided a response. To illustrate what the hon. member for Mercier just mentioned, for a while, it was the Minister of Justice who answered the questions. We know that at the time, the Minister of Justice considered amending the Criminal Code. Opposition members like the hon. member for Drummond and the hon. member for Laval-Centre were in favour of this kind of intervention. They were in favour of a bill that would amend the Criminal Code.
Unfortunately, that did not happen. The government took a different approach, and it was the Minister of Health who introduced the present bill which is legislative in nature but, in addition, creates a federal agency, and I may recall the proceedings of the committee and the debate around these proceedings.
We in the opposition are aware of the importance of the problems affected by this bill. So much so that we wanted a bill that would amend the Criminal Code. We agree there were a lot of problems with this bill. It is a bill that could be very complex because the problems are complex. The bill touches on ethical, moral, medical and scientific considerations. Many other areas are affected by this bill, but there is also the whole question of the problems of infertile couples who want children.
This issue is not trivial; it is extremely important. In spite of a voluntary moratorium, we were still seeing ads in papers, mostly university papers, promoting trading in ova and sperm and dealing with every aspect of human reproduction, which shows that this voluntary moratorium did not work. This is why we, in the opposition, want to see the Criminal Code amended.
When reviewing a bill, each member has his or her way of assessing things. For my part, I always try to answer the following five questions: Does the bill clarify matters? I will answer this later. Second, is the bill all encompassing? Does it cover all the issues? When you first look at a bill with only 13 clauses and a few pages, you might wonder, on a primary level, if it is all encompassing. I will get back to this later.
Third, will this bill be effective? Because a bill which is not effective and is unenforceable is nothing more than wishful thinking. I must certainly ask myself this question.
Fourth, does this bill respect jurisdictions? I will say more on this later. I point out that, under the Constitution, health is an area of exclusive provincial jurisdiction.
Fifth, does the bill respect individual rights? We have a charter of rights and freedoms. It is former Prime Minister Trudeau who developed it and enshrined it in the Constitution. This question must be asked from this perspective.
I will try to answer all five questions.
First, does it clarify matters?
No. On some aspects, yes, on some others, no.
First, let us look at the definitions. Earlier, I did more research in addition to the research I had done previously by looking in the two dictionaries available to us. Some people we consulted, for example, the physicians tell us that some definitions correspond, that they are correct. Others tell us that the definitions used present a problem.
When, at the start of a bill, the definitions are problematic in terms of medical research, of medicine or of sciences, there is a slight problem. This means that it is not very clear.
Another striking problem is the inconsistency between the French and the English titles. In one language, it is called "manipulation génétique", in the other, genetic technologies. "Manipulation", technologies, in the case of such a crucial subject, I wonder if particular attention should not be paid to those terms. Of course, as members of the Standing Committee on Health, we shall be in a position to ask questions and suggest some clarifications at the proper time. This is not a trivial issue.
Also, there is no distinction made between assisted reproduction and fundamental research. Those are two different things. The first one refers to care and treatment, the second one to medical research in genetics. Those are two distinct areas and to treat them without distinction is dangerous.
Another question is: Is this bill complete? After so much study and so many pages of committee reports, we would think that it should be complete, but it is not because, first, it leaves a lot of room to rules and, second, it also leaves a lot of room for interpretation by the new federal agency that will be created of new rules.
Bill C-47 is an incomplete legislation that is far from meeting the expectations raised by the government. Even in the information paper, the government tried to set limits and protect health.
On page 48 of this document, we see that the government intends to start the third and most complex phase of its plan to manage new reproductive technologies, that is, the development of regulations. This clearly indicates that the biggest part remains to be done, because the 13 clauses of the present bill are not enough to give it its full dimensions.
I have here a letter from the Canadian Fertility and Andrology Society, which wrote to all members of the Standing Committee on Health, to say:
If this bill is approved without any amendment, it will have very bad consequences for medical and scientific communities-
I can understand its point. It concluded that: "-this legislation did not receive all the consideration that is usually given to bills as important as this one".
When a bill is said to be complete, one should feel that opinions have been heard from every angle. I will stop here.
Is the bill in question effective? We answer no. If the government had wanted this bill to be effective, as the hon. member for Mercier said earlier, as the hon. member for Drummond asked for many times, this bill would have had to change the Criminal Code.
This is not what it does. It purports to create an agency and leaves a lot of room for interpretation and for regulations that will elude this House and the legislators.
The bill also brings other legislation that is parallel to the Criminal Code, that is being added to the rest.
Already, it is not simple for the federal government and the provinces to operate together in this country, especially in sometimes shared, sometimes exclusive jurisdictions. The federal government is adding a new dimension, another agency to further complicate things.
We realize the trend is always the same. We saw it in the motions put forward by the hon. member for Mississauga-South today and on many occasions. Essentially, what we feel is a willingness to centralize the federal authority. Speaking about jurisdictions, this perpetuates a federal interference in an area belonging to Quebec and the provinces.
The announced creation of a national agency is unacceptable. Yet another agency. Recently, an agency was created to inspect food. We are talking about all areas. Every time the government has legislated in the past three years, its first reaction was to intervene through national standards or guidelines or, more subtly,
through a federal agency responsible for implementing the rules set by a minister. It does not always do so, but it very often does.
This agency could take advantage of the rather vague provisions and definitions in the bill to extend its activities to areas other than new reproductive technologies. This supposedly independent agency would in fact have to comply with the standards set by the Minister of Health.
Fifth, there are individual rights. In an article published in Le Devoir , Josée Legault raised some questions:
In this context, would it not be preferable to better monitor current practices instead of taking the risk of making them impractical, if not criminal?
She asked this question. It is not necessarily our opinion, but it is an opinion that must be heard.
She went on to say:
In addition, the first time an infertile woman or couple is fined or sued, Ottawa may well find itself trapped in its own charter of rights.
We on this side of the House are not sure this review was done properly. What Josée Legault says is her own opinion.
In any case, it is about time the Liberal government legislated in this area, although we would have preferred that it do so by amending the Criminal Code. We do not understand why this is not the case and we are very disappointed. This bill, which the Standing Orders prevent me from showing you, is quite thin, only 13 clauses for such an important, multidimensional problem in terms of values.
I do not know if my female colleagues in the official opposition would allow me to use this phrase, but I will take the risk; I feel that, as far as the new reproductive technologies are concerned, the elephant has just given birth to a mouse.
