Mr. Speaker, I will direct my comments to what I think potentially is a defect in the legislation and confine my 10 minutes to that. It is the whole question of paid surrogate parenting. A large majority of members see this as a terrible evil. I spent some time thinking about this issue and I am still trying to determine what is evil about it and wondering why we are targeting it and criminalizing it.
Let me talk about a hypothetical surrogate parenting process. We have a couple who cannot have a child because the female has a disability. Her womb will not permit her to have a child. The couple find a young female who may be attending university and needs financial assistance. They engage her services with a commercial contract and the young girl rents out her womb.
The girl receives excellent medical care. She receives the highest standards in health, diet and so on. The contract states that no alcohol and no drugs can be used and that monitoring processes are in place.
What part of that evil process has to be criminalized? The parents receive a healthy child. The girl receives badly needed financial assistance. When we pass criminal law I always try to figure out which party is injured? Is the child injured? Are the parents injured? Is the girl who rents her womb injured? Who is the victim of the crime?
What is the great moral standard that we are infringing here? Invariably in criminal law we get into morality. I went through the great Ten Commandments and I cannot in all honesty find out how this impinges on any of those Ten Commandments.
Almost everyone I have talked to say that what is wrong with this is that a woman is renting her body for money or profit. With all due respect, that is wrong and inaccurate. Most people I know who run their own businesses or work in this world obtain rent for the use of their bodies. In the NHL right now there are players who are actually brutalizing themselves in pursuit of the Stanley Cup. Boxers will inflict terrible harm upon themselves in the name of profit.
Quite honestly, I have never considered a woman carrying a child to birth as something brutal, unhealthy, wrong or immoral. I am really trying to grapple with the rationale behind this particular point.
Let us take in vitro fertilization, which I believe is legal. The people running those clinics do it for a profit. The emphasis there is on a test tube. It seems to me that what we are saying here is that it is legal if it is a test tube situation but criminal if it is a child in a womb. I have a lot of problems with that.
Let us look at it another way. What great public interest are we threatening with this process? The parents receive a healthy child and the student makes it through university with financial assistance. What great public interest does this threaten and what makes it serious enough to criminalize it? Someone needs to help me find that public interest because I do not know what it is.
When we make laws we should always look at whether these laws will be legal. I have taken a look at the charter. Section 7 states that we have the right to liberty. Section 12 states that we should not face cruel and unusual punishment. I would suggest that sending two parents to prison because they wanted a child might be cruel and unusual punishment.
We must also look at the equality provisions. Subsection 15(1) of the charter says everyone has equal benefit of the law without discrimination. One of the grounds of discrimination is physical disability. One of the hypothetical parents has a physical disability. We are walking on thin ice legally as far as I am concerned. I am not exactly sure how anyone could walk into court with a compelling reason under the charter to defend criminalizing this conduct.
Let us look at some of the side consequences. Are you folks in the House prepared to send people to prison because they want a child and get a child of their own? I am not. How would we treat the child? You have come up with the proceeds of crime provisions. You would criminalize the act because the proceed of the crime would be a child.
There are a lot of side issues. If people leave the country and rent a womb in the United States or Europe would it be a criminal offence? What would be the status of the child? We should be thinking of these things. If we make bad laws here people will find ways to deal with it.
I have one other comment on the whole topic. There are members in the House who argue vehemently this is abhorrent, wrong and terrible and must be stopped. They are some of the same people who have no problem whatsoever with abortion clinics which are for profit and which kill life. Here is a case where a couple who cannot have a child make a commercial arrangement to get their own healthy child. Are we to make that into a criminal offence? I am sorry, but I have a lot of trouble trying to figure out the logic of the argument. I wish there were NDP people here today. They are the ones who generally take that line. I would like them to explain to me the logic of the issue because I do not know what it is.