Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak to this subject this afternoon.
The bill is the Liberal government's attempt at legislation to prohibit, through the criminal code, certain assisted human reproduction practices and to authorize the regulation of other practices under licence. It also creates an agency to operate a licensing regime to monitor activity and keep records.
The official opposition will not be supporting the bill unless the government allows a number of amendments.
We have been calling for legislation in this field since 1993 when the royal commission on new reproductive technologies reported. In July 1995, Ottawa introduced a voluntary moratorium on some technologies. The government introduced a bill on June 14, 1996, prohibiting 13 uses of assisted reproductive and genetic technologies but the bill died on the order paper at the 1997 election.
Draft legislation was thereafter submitted to the Standing Committee on Health on May 3, 2001, for consideration. The committee presented its report, called “Assisted Human Reproduction: Building Families”, in December of last year.
In March 2002, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, followed by Genome Canada, pre-empted parliament by publishing rules to approve funding for experiments on human embryos and aborted fetuses. This was put off for one year following protests from the official opposition.
The general social policy theme of the Canadian Alliance Party stresses that all human beings possess the fundamental human rights of life, freedom and the right to own and enjoy property.
My colleagues and I will work to underline for the Liberals that human embryos are early human lives that deserve and must be treated with respect and protection.
The bill's preamble does not provide an acknowledgment of human dignity or respect for human life, even though it is stated later in the bill as the principle objective of the agency it creates.
The minority report submitted by the Canadian Alliance to the December 2001 report from the committee recommended:
That the final legislation clearly recognize the human embryo as human life and that the Statutory Declaration include the phrase "respect for human life.
We strongly support and encourage health sciences research and development. We strongly support research on adult stem cells.
We are mindful to respect the constitutional role of the provinces in health care delivery and would ensure that the federal government works with them in a co-operative and constructive manner.
The bill appears to respect provincial jurisdiction by allowing provinces to opt out if they provide an equivalent enforcement regime and by allowing them a representative observer on the board. However we want to be sure the Liberal government across the way respects the provinces.
The bill would provide a more tightly regulated assisted human reproduction regime. This would make it safer and more effective for prospective parents. Health information about donors would be kept for future children.
However there are a number of problems with the bill as well. For example, under the bill, children born of assisted human reproduction technology would not have the right to know the identities of their parents. The government needs to pay attention to the fact that embryos, if not destroyed, naturally become normal children and adults. Another problem is that the government needs to go further than the bill does to ensure that expenses paid to surrogate mothers do not result in effective commercial surrogacy.
In terms of addressing the more contentious issues of the bill, we believe, as many Canadians do, that it is important to define what a necessary use is for this research. We support the creation of an agency, such as the one proposed under the bill, to regulate the sector but we are concerned about the agency's decisions concerning what necessary research is.
We support stem cell research. We are calling for more funding for adult stem cell research.
I would like to take some issue with the comments of the member for London West who quoted a number of scientists and researchers from one particular point of view. I draw to the attention of the House that doctors, scientists and researchers can be quoted to represent almost any point of view on this subject, including those who advocate strictly research on adult stem cells.
I want to take this opportunity to give the Liberals fair warning that they should tread very carefully in legislating this technology. Adult stem cells hold a great deal of promise. It may not be desirable nor necessary to engage in embryonic stem cell research to the great extent advocated by some.
Canada is a leader in the world when it comes to biopharmaceuticals. In Montreal bioscientists report that adult neural stem cells taken from a patient's own central nervous system have been successfully used to treat Parkinson's disease.
In the United States patients undergoing liposuction may want to bank the fat removed from their tummy, backsides and thighs because the excess fat contains stem cells. These fat cells can be stored for years. These stem cells can be isolated from liposuction specimens. They can be grown to bone, cartilage, tendons and other connective tissue. Patients can use them in the future, transforming them into a number of specialized cells, depending upon the patient's needs. If a patient were injured in a car accident, stored stem cells could be used to make bone tissue to repair the damage.
Using adult stem cells collected from a patient's body and stored eliminates the risk of rejection when later reintroduced into that same patient's body. Significantly, it also avoids the ethical issues in using stem cells derived from embryos.
For example, there are more studies to be done. This research is far from complete. It needs to be proved that the transformation of a cell to another type of cell is irreversible. We do not want some chain reaction going from a cell to something that is not even anticipated.
The Liberal government should be taking these and other unknown items into consideration before opening the floodgates on embryonic stem cell research.
This is one reason why the Canadian Alliance is calling for a three year moratorium on experiments on human embryos, until the potential of adult stem cells can be more fully developed. This coincides with the three year review mandated in the bill.
We want free votes in the House at all stages. We want each and every MP to search his or her own conscience, to search the conscience of his constituents and where prudent to pause until we know more about stem cell research. It may be the more reasonable course of action, instead of premature embryonic stem cell research to do it this way.
Developments in adult stem cell research and technology is progressing at an astounding rate with new discoveries frequently being announced. The government and the agency it is creating to deal with these questions should err on the side of caution, instead of charging ahead with decisions that will be very difficult to backtrack on later. As I have said, many members will be detailing aspects of the bill that need to be changed.
I want to close with one thought. At the time of conception when the zygote is formed by the coming together of an egg and a sperm cell, all the DNA that will ever govern that individual's growth is already there and will mark that person throughout the whole lifetime. Using scientific terms from that first moment, we are talking about a person.
It is never a good idea to confuse scientific, legal and religious principles. I do not intend to do that. Science has shown when humanity begins. The law has defined how precious is human life and I see the religious principles which govern my life as confirming these previous two.
My Lord and saviour Jesus Christ at one point while referring to the children said that it would be better for anyone to never have been born than to harm even one of these little children. That was at a time when human life was very precious and when children could be slaughtered at a king's whim.
Let us never go back to harming our children.