Mr. Speaker, on Friday, November 22 I asked the Minister of Health a question that is of importance to Canadians. I said:
Mr. Speaker, first we had tainted blood imported from U.S. prisons. Now we are importing semen from U.S. prisons to produce Canadian children. The catastrophic fallout from disease spread by tainted blood has created thousands of victims and 20 years later continues to occupy the House and destroy the lives of the victims.
I went on to ask:
With recent deaths from organ transplants that contained the West Nile virus and untold pathogens yet to be identified, why is the Minister of Health establishing agencies to facilitate the international trade in human embryos, human cells and human body components?
The minister's response began:
I am not exactly sure what the hon. member is referring to.
I would like to clarify for Canadians tonight what we are talking about. It is the import and export of human tissue, human cells and human gametes, for example, sperm. I wonder how many Canadians realize that the industry to help people with fertility problems is importing sperm from U.S. prisons to help with reproductive technology. It raises some concerns.
I make reference to the tainted blood scandal. Have we learned anything from importing blood? The tainted blood affair has been considered to be one of the worst public health disasters in Canadian history. About 1,100 Canadians became infected with blood-borne HIV. Between 10,000 and 20,000 others contracted hepatitis C after receiving tainted blood products. The federal government's compensation plan now amounts to something like $1.4 billion in reparations and assistance.
Since 1995 about 3,000 Canadian women every year are inseminated with donor semen. Because of anonymity and the way the department handles this, there is no requirement other than what the department describes as minimum safety requirements respecting donor selection, cell, tissue and organ collection, processing, packaging, testing, labelling, storage, recall of cells, tissues and organs, record keeping and adverse event reporting.
This is a very delicate subject. We are talking about creating a human being and there is no social identity attached to the sperm donation.
The question to raise is, what are we importing when we import human cells? There are viruses. Who knows what other pathogens may be associated with these cells? We have enough trouble containing things within our border.
When asked at committee, Mr. Ouimette, who represented Health Canada, said that we have the ability to check beyond our borders but we have no authority to look beyond our borders. How could we possibly inspect facilities beyond our borders?
In this sensitive area do we not have enough resources among Canadians, the 33 million of us, to provide the biological sources needed within our own borders to have some sense of controlling it? That is the question.