Mr. Speaker, last week the premier of Ontario and his minister of health and long term care issued a challenge to the rights of companies to patent individual human genes. I had many occasions to disagree with decisions of the government of Ontario but on this one I have to state my agreement.
Getting a patent for a diagnostic test or process deriving from the applications of genes is fine, but to actually patent individual human genes and prohibit others from carrying research on those genes is not acceptable.
It is tantamount to allowing companies to seek and obtain a patent on individual elements of the periodic table such as oxygen or hydrogen, and it is not a tenable situation.
I urge our government to embark on a fight to disallow the individual companies around the country and anywhere else in the world to obtain patents on individual human genes. That is not the way of sharing information worldwide. The human genome belongs to everyone, not to individual companies.