Madam Speaker, I would like to begin by thanking members on the government side of the House who supported this bill. Although they are not here in body, I know they are here in spirit and they are supportive of it.
It is unfortunate in our present system that we have a scenario where private members' bills are slotted at the end of the day, late in the week, when individuals have to catch flights and things of that sort. These are individuals from the New Democratic Party, the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party. There were some 100 signatures collected in support of this bill. The bill also came in by way of the draw and that is why we are having this discussion today.
What I think is really quite questionable about our system is the fact that if we go into committee with a bill that has the support of at least a third of the members of the House, in principle the bill should come before the House. It should be voted on, it should be tweaked, it should be amended, it should be changed and improved.
I would certainly welcome the member from the Conservative Party who spoke previously for the contributions he would make there. He would listen to the various witnesses from Nurses for Life and various health care workers and he would find that we do not have protections in our country at this time for nurses, the men and women who serve alongside, but who are in a different position than physicians. Everything that he had to say concerned protections for, in his own words, physicians. Physicians are a lot different than nurses. That is the focus. That is the particular matter under discussion here today. I want to thank and encourage others who work in the health care profession and those who are in training institutions.
I recall a day some months ago when I had an aboriginal girl come into my office. She was pretty emotionally shook up. She was coming to the completion of her term of study. She asked me “What can I do in the situation I am caught in? I am supposed to do a study of certain modules or elect certain modules as I come to the end, and it appears—I do not know and I have to find out—that I have to be involved in an abortion procedure”. This was an aboriginal girl and from her background, whether religious or not, sanctity of life, respect for life, was important. She had the feeling that she would be coerced or forced into an abortion procedure or be denied completion of her program. I have talked to doctors and to others, and it seems that in some schools at least, students are forced to be involved in this as part of their training program.
As the member who spoke prior to me mentioned, it is not covered. We have too many nurses, too many individuals, who call and tell us that this is a problem. It is not something that we can simply leave. It would no longer be a problem if it were something the provinces could deal with. It needs the broader protection of the federal government. It should be in the criminal code, as we are suggesting.
If there are better ideas in terms of the protection of health care workers, we are certainly open to them, but nothing has been forthcoming so far. We would gladly do what we could in defence of and on behalf of good health care workers who dedicate their lives to the profession or specialize in the area of bringing life into the world. They do not want to be involved in abortion procedures. It is not banning abortion; it is simply saying that others cannot be forced into being involved. It is saying that others cannot be forced into being involved in euthanasia. We hope to have a bill in place some day to deal with the reproductive technology that greatly troubles health care workers. It is ethically troubling for them.
Again, as I conclude my remarks, I want to thank members of the House who may even be viewing this in their offices or in their homes on CPAC, especially members from the government side of the House. Obviously they would not be the minority, but there are good members of that party which have given their support, as well as members of the Conservative Party. In fact it was the deputy House leader from the maritimes who seconded this bill. It was this member's own colleague.
I want to thank members of my party, a good number of them, maybe the most significant amount of those 100 signatures, as well as members from the NDP. This issue needs to be dealt with and we will do that in due course.