Mr. Speaker, let me say for the benefit of those who are watching this debate that today we are debating a bill that seeks to regulate aspects of assisted human reproduction. Some people have different names for it, but the bill is about assisted human reproduction.
The bill essentially does three things. One is that it makes certain reproductive processes a criminal offence. Second, the bill attempts to regulate other reproductive processes by requiring a licence. Third, bill creates an agency that would administer and monitor all of this.
With respect to those assisted reproductive processes that would be deemed criminal offences, I would point out that the bill has a very interesting history. First, in 1993 there was a very outstanding commission, the royal commission on new reproductive technologies, which reported in 1993 and suggested that there were certain aspects of assisted reproductive technology that should be outlawed, that should be damned in our country. That was in 1993. In 1996 the government said it would put all of that in a bill, but the bill died on the order paper due to the 1997 election. Here we are in 2002 just introducing a bill that would bring into effect the very strong recommendations of a commission that reported in 1993.
One wonders where the government has been for the last nine years, because here we are today dealing with something that should have been dealt with in 1993. Meanwhile, science has moved on, research has moved on and technology has moved on. As well, commercial investment in these procedures has moved on but the government has sat on its hands. That is a shame. It has been a dereliction of duty. The government should hang its head in shame that it has not dealt with this important issue much more quickly and much more expeditiously.
The procedures that would be criminal offences, finally, are: human cloning; therapeutic cloning, that is, cloning an individual so that certain organs can be harvested; animal-human hybrids or chimeras; sex selection; germ line alteration; buying and selling of embryos; and paid surrogacy.
There is a bunch of loopholes in this list, which some other speakers have mentioned. For example, with respect to the ban on paid surrogacy, the act would allow expenses to be repaid but the expenses are not identified. They are not limited, so presumably the expenses could add up to a nice fat commercial fee for surrogacy. That is not dealt with in the bill. Also, the bill allows certain transgenic procedures. Although it purports to outlaw animal-human hybrids or chimeras, which essentially means the fusing of animal and human material, it does allow transgenic procedures but does not define them.
The government argues that there is a particular test that needs to be allowed by the inclusion of transgenics. If there is a particular test that should be allowed, why not just say so? Why put an undefined term into the bill and allow something that should be outlawed under the ban under animal-human hybrids or chimeras? We do not know. Those are questions we are asking.
With respect to what can be licensed, there could be a licence provided to experiment on human embryos that already have been created through accepted procedures to help infertile couples, where the donor has given written permission. Last time I looked, creating an embryo took two donors, someone to donate the egg and someone to donate sperm, so why the consent of “donor”? If there is only one donor to give consent, which one would it be? We do not know. It does not make sense.
By the way, Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time on this debate.
The Liberals have a bad habit of this, of bringing in framework legislation and then leaving all the inconvenient details either to the regulations, which nobody ever sees, debates or oversees, or to the courts to define if the issue ever arises. This again is another dereliction of duty and one that does not serve Canadians well.
All parties agreed that unless the applicant clearly demonstrates that no other category of biological material could be used from which to derive healing human therapies, human embryos should not be the subject of experimentation. This was an agreement at the committee and of all parties in the House. Unfortunately the government ignores its own committees and simply does something different. Again Canadians are not served well.
The committee listened to witness after witness and anxiously considered all the pros, cons and nuances of using human embryos for experimentation and research. It then said no, that we should make sure this is a last resort because of the troubling ethical considerations and concerns that many people have. It said that we need to treat human life with dignity and respect, that we need to protect it, and that this should be something we would do only if it were shown to be absolutely necessary. However, there is nothing like that in the bill.
With respect to the agency, it is pretty interesting because essentially the agency reports only to the minister. It is not independent of the minister because the minister can give any policy direction she likes to the agency and it must comply, although the minister's direction that the agency has to comply with will be kept secret. There will be no public disclosure. There will be this closed little arm of the minister dealing with some of the most important issues in our society with no reporting requirements and no oversight. No one will have an idea of what is actually going on. We have to wonder: why the secrecy in such an important area?
There are a number of other issues. Other speakers have touched on them but I will go through some of them as well.
First, children conceived by assisted human reproduction would have no right to know the identity of their biological parents unless those individuals consent. This flies in the face of what we already do, because adopted children have a tremendous right to know about their heritage, their lineage, the place they come from, their roots, so to speak. Why should children conceived by assisted human reproduction not have the same right? It does not make sense. For some reason this is in the bill.
There is also a concern that the draft legislation has already been pre-empted by regulations or rules put out by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. There was complete outrage from members of parliament who had served on the committee, including Liberal members, who said that they had just spent a year studying it. They asked just who those at the institute were to say that the institute would do something on its own. Only after that did the CIHR say that it had these rules but would not give any funding according to those rules. Again the government sat on its hands and allowed this thing to get out of control, leaving some important questions unanswered.
The bill has some flaws. For that reason, I believe that members of the House should think very clearly and carefully before voting for the bill unless it is amended to correct some of the gaping holes in the specifics of the bill, in how it will actually operate and whether it will in fact operate in the best interests of children, parents and the human aspects of our society.