Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to this issue because I believe it is a classic example of the value of Private Members' Business.
I congratulate the member for Drummond for bringing the bill forward. It addresses one portion of an issue that was covered in Bill C-47, the bill that died on the order paper as a result of the last election which purported to make all kinds of fixes to issues of human reproductive technology.
One of the problems with our present system of government sponsored legislation is that the government tries to get, and rightly so, as much bang for its buck as it can. It prepares omnibus bills that address entire issues.
For instance, Bill C-20 is a very elaborate bill that is looking at amendments to the Competition Act. There is a group of bills that look at whole issues that are debated in very grand style. Sometimes they occasionally come to grief because they try to fix so many areas that many flaws are discovered and the bills fail. Bill C-47 on human reproductive technology is a case in point.
What killed it for me was that it wanted to stop genetic research which would have in effect led researchers along avenues that would have corrected genetically inheritable diseases like muscular dystrophy. We had this incredible situation where a law was coming down the pike that would have stopped cloning of human beings, which we all agree is frightening and something we should at least have a very long moratorium on. By the same token it would have attempted to kill research in areas very much in the public interest that hopefully would alleviate human suffering.
The problem is that the government—and I do not mean it as a criticism of the government—traditionally in the parliamentary system has always come down with big bills.
Where I think Private Members' Business has a tremendous role is doing exactly what the member for Drummond is doing with her bill which looks at one urgent issue. That urgent issue is that at least Canadian society and at least this MP, if I may so, are not prepared to have research go forward which could possibly lead tomorrow to the cloning of human beings. That is a frightening concept.
Not that we can make jest of it, but there are certain members of the opposition I would only want one copy of. If we had multiple copies of them I think we would all be very worried. That aside, the reality is that we are not yet sufficiently sophisticated as human beings to play God. I do not think we can afford to go back into the science fiction books and actually produce multiple copies of the same human beings. Quite apart from religious ramifications it would raise huge ethical dilemmas.
I cannot even begin to imagine the ethical problems that would confront society in the process of choosing who would be copied. Who would it be? Would it be some top politician? Would it be some artist? Who would be the first to be cloned? Then how would we prevent people being copied illicitly who might be carrying genes or characteristics that are reprehensible yet have the money to copy themselves? It is an absolutely unacceptable concept.
The difficulty is we know now that it is possible, or if not possible it is immediately on the horizon. The member for Drummond recognizes this. Discarding all the controversial aspects of Bill C-47, she focused on the one thing that I think most Canadians would absolutely agree with, that we must at least have a moratorium now on the cloning of human beings.
The government's objection, as I understand it, is that the bill would put the restriction and the penalty in the Criminal Code. This is not an appropriate place for this type of penalty. We can give the government the benefit of the doubt on that. The government has to be very concerned about tradition, the appropriateness of legislation and its effect.
I must say I tend to support the member for Drummond on this issue. We must remember that if it goes into the Criminal Code it will only be a temporary measure until we can come back to the issue. Maybe it will take us a year. Maybe it will take us two years. Maybe it will take us ten years, but we can come back to the issue with a more comprehensive bill on reproductive technology.
Quite frankly I do not think we will have an easy ride with any new omnibus legislation on the subject. We need the bill to make very clear that the country does not tolerate and will not tolerate attempts to clone human beings. We can be open to other forms of genetic research because we have to, because it is in the interests of humanity to encourage our scientists to continue with genetic research, but we should draw a line in the sand.
The bill does it. It puts it in the Criminal Code but probably only temporarily and later we can move it to a more appropriate place.
This is a classic example of Private Members' Business which raises an important issue, offers Canadian society and the government a way of putting on the back burner a very difficult and emotional issue and sets it aside for now until society knows better how to address it.
I have to say the member for Drummond has done us a service by bringing the issue before the House and I thank her for it.