Mr. Speaker, the first paragraph of an article in the Ottawa Citizen on May 19 reads:
Canada's political parties, MPs and bureaucrats aren't giving Canadians the say in policy-making they promised, another blow to the nation's eroding trust in government, says a respected think-tank.
A forthcoming report by the Canadian Policy Research Networks concludes that for all the talk, money and time spent on “public consultations” and “citizen involvement,” Canadians aren't having a real say in federal policies.
And if they do get a say, they're rarely listened to.
I have heard a number of members in debate today give their own personal opinions on the bill. That may be doing a disservice to our role as parliamentarians. I know not everyone in this place believes that we should be representing our constituents. I have tried to do my best to achieve that over the years.
In September 2001 I printed an article, in the North Shore and Outlook newspapers in my riding, predicting the arrival of this bill and asking my community to get involved. It stated:
The final form of the Bill will probably ban certain activities such as human cloning, sex selection, the creation of human embryos for research purposes, and the sale and purchase of human embryos. On the other hand the Bill is almost certain to also include extensive, and some would say quite arbitrary, powers for the Health Minister to regulate reproductive technologies or turn that job over to a new authority created for the purpose.
The time has come to show that my predictions were pretty accurate in that regard. I will come back to that in just a moment. Later on in the article I invited my community to get involved and stated:
Bills like this do not come along very often, but as with the so-called Gun Control Bill of 1994, there is inevitably going to be a lot of media and public discussion about the new legislation.
I invited my community to form two committees, one for the bill and one against, to help me reach a conclusion within my riding on which way I should vote on various amendments and provisions in the bill.
It is interesting to talk about representing constituents. I received quite an amount of lobbying from those who have very strong moral feelings about this issue. I invited not just experts or those with scientific experience but lay people as well who had strong moral feelings to come forward and help me with the committees.
People did come forward and posed some interesting questions. I will read some of the questions that came from my riding in just a moment but now I will go back to the predictions that I made in the column about the ministerial powers that would probably come forward in the bill. When I read the bill the first thing that struck me was subclause 20(1):
The Minister is responsible for the policy of the Government of Canada respecting assisted human reproduction and any other matter that, in the opinion of the Minister, relates to the subject-matter of this Act.
What an appalling clause to put into a bill. In the opinion of the minister anything in the world that the minister thinks relates to this act therefore relates to this act and is under ministerial control. Couple that with subclause 25(1) which states:
The Minister may issue policy directions to the Agency concerning the exercise of any of its powers, and the Agency shall give effect to directions so issued.
My goodness. What happened to the days of arm's length agencies of government? Here we have a minister who can decide at his or her whim what is connected to the bill and whether it is important or not and then direct the agency with no choice by the agency, no matter whether there is logic for the policy or not, to go ahead and do it or cease doing it, whatever the case may be.
Finally, if we couple that with subclause 25(3) which states quite clearly:
Policy directions issued by the Minister are not a statutory instrument for the purposes of the Statutory Instruments Act.
This is the final straw. The government has written into the bill that policy directions which are to all intents and purposes regulations are not even recognized as regulations so we cannot take them to the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations to find out if they are even legal.
There has been a ton of talk in this place today about whether embryonic stem cells are better than adult stem cells. My personal feeling is that the most important thing at the moment is the appalling provision in the bill that regardless of what we think about embryonic or adult stem cells, the minister has complete control to do whatever he or she wants.
I want to mention one other subclause in the bill. Subclause 5(1)(f) which deals with prohibitions states:
No person shall knowingly alter the genome of a cell of a human being or in vitro embryo such that the alteration is capable of being transmitted to descendants;
If researchers were to find a cure for Parkinson's or heart disease or some other abnormality, would we not want to allow the genome change to be passed to the next generation? Would we not be doing a disservice to prohibit it? This is one area of the bill that disturbs me greatly.
Maybe the minister made a mistake and did not think about what the implications were of that clause. I hope she will consider amending that clause to ensure that if cures were found they could be passed on to succeeding generations.
I would like to turn to some of the questions that came out of my riding because they are important. Whether embryonic or adult stem cells are better can be argued all day in the House. It can also be argued by scientists
However when we put these issues before the people we represent, we get a number of questions asked. If we were to ban certain types of research in the bill, would we not be kidding ourselves into thinking that this type of research would not happen elsewhere? In other words, would we not just be like the proverbial ostrich, putting our heads in the sand?
Would it not be better to permit wide-ranging research, even that which is banned in the bill, so that we could regulate and monitor it while ensuring that our best researchers remain here in Canada, instead of going to other countries where those types of research are permitted? Are we willing as Canadians to accept the medical benefits which flow from research in other countries, even if that research is of a type banned in Canada? Are we willing to make it a crime for Canadians to travel to another country to take advantage of medical procedures and/or treatments which are banned in Canada under the bill?
How does the bill prevent researchers in other countries from carrying out research, such as the three Middle Eastern women who are supposedly pregnant with clones as a result of the work of an Italian researcher? Are we really advancing the cause of ethics by driving these researchers to work in countries which may not have the same ethics that we do?
Why do some people claim that cloning is unethical? What exactly is it about cloning that makes it unethical? For example, should pro-life groups not be consistent in their support of the right to life and be willing to embrace a cloned person just as they would embrace a person created through natural means?
Here is an example given by the person who posed the last question. Let us say there is a woman, not married, who wants to have a baby. She does not want to go through in vitro fertilization using a donor because she does not want to create a baby with someone else's sperm. She wants her own baby, so she makes the decision that she would like to have a cloned baby. What is unethical about that? I am actually having trouble understanding what is unethical about that. I suspect that the services will be offered in other countries anyway, so a woman in that type of example will just go to the Philippines or to Afghanistan, or somewhere else where she can have it done.
Those are the sorts of questions that have come out of my riding. Those are the concerns I have with the bill. I do hope that the minister at least will take some notice of those concerns.
It was brought to my attention that there was a conference on stem cell research in the Vancouver area in March. Some interesting material came out of that conference. I do not have time at the moment to read it into the record, although I did write one of my North Shore news articles about it. The two researchers who were speaking at that conference said that it was important for Canadians to understand the science before they make the ethical judgments. That is an important thing for us to consider.