Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre for a very enlightening speech. I should recognize the fact that the hon. member has been an outspoken champion on women's issues for many years.
I made note of two things the member pointed out in her speech, which were shocking to me. First, the women members on the standing committee are still having to fight the age old argument for gender parity. Bill C-56 is without doubt, first and foremost, a women's health issue. Yet in this day and age women like the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre have to stand up and make the argument for gender parity on the board. Could she comment on that?
Second, I would like the member's further remarks on what was most shocking to me and that is Bill C-56 seems to be geared to favour the biotechnology industry. It raises this bizarre spectacle or spectre of patenting and commercialization of life forms, even human life forms. That is absolutely shocking.
The hon. member pointed out that with one simple consequential amendment to the Patent Act we could have precluded the idea that anyone could put a patent on human life forms and market and commercialize them. Could the she expand on what consequential amendments might have been made to the Patent Act, if the government were serious about precluding what we view as an absolute horror?