Mr. Speaker, the government must ensure that the risks in the bill and the benefits of any treatment for women are fully disclosed and that the moneys needed to achieve these objectives are made available. This for us is the litmus test of the legislation.
The most effective way to ensure that women's health comes first is to ensure that the precautionary principle is entrenched in any bill dealing with assisted reproductive technology.
We recommended that the precautionary principle be explicitly set out in the legislation and in its final report the health committee agreed with that recommendation. However the precautionary principle is nowhere to be found among the governing provisions of the bill. The precautionary principle, which puts safety first, can impede the rush for profits that all too often accompany new scientific developments.
Therefore the choice not to include this principle reflects the government's affection we believe for an industry that has benefited tremendously from being able to establish itself in assisted reproductive technology unencumbered by regulation during these many years without an act.
The government's fondness for and impartiality to big business has also opened the door far too widely for an unacceptable level of commercialization in the area of assisted reproductive technologies. We see this in the issue of patenting life forms.
There was a consensus on the health committee that we should stop commercialization in this area, that the government should prohibit the patenting of human genetic material, but there was not a word about this from the health minister. I am delighted to see her in the House for this important legislation. When she introduced Bill C-56 there was no mention of any move on patent protection. The health committee called on the government to prohibit this but the government chose to ignore this important advice putting its emphasis instead on corporate property rights.