Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to have an opportunity to contribute a small bit to this debate of a significant legislative area which in my view has been left unregulated for far too long.
I do recall standing in this place approximately 10 or 12 years ago on a debate that covered a part of this field and suggesting that somewhere out in the real world, not in this place but somewhere out in the real world, there were scientists doing their work and somewhere out there in a laboratory closet there was someone developing what might become a mutant of the species, because we are never sure as scientists carry on their work what they will end up with, and sometimes they are not sure.
We knew then, as we know now, that the implications for the future of the human race were actually in the hands of individuals most of whom were well-meaning, but some of whom were quite possibly simply looking to make the fast buck, the quick discovery. That made me, among others, fairly nervous.
Over the years we found it necessary to study this and related questions and put a magnifying glass on the whole area. It was quite appropriate. I regret that it has taken a decade or more to reach the point where we feel we have enough consensus in our society to impose some regulations and some guidance, let us call it, for those in the field.
There are in existence in Canada now groups of scientists and teachers who feel that they have a reasonable handle on these related fields of endeavour in human reproduction. They feel that their professional expertise and their commitment to country, to family, to community and to the conventional morality is sufficient to guide them in their work.
I am not suggesting for a moment that any one particular group of them or any particular scientist, teacher or professor is not doing things properly, but it is always a risk in the modern world. We know that around the world people operate on different moral codes and have different ways of looking at things. The risk of some person or group of persons going off on a tangent and manipulating the human genome in a way that might create a mutant of the species, a strain that would not have been there had they not gone through the laboratory effort, no matter how they got there, no matter what their objectives were, would not only embarrass us but prejudice us as a human race.
At the time, I remember trying to figure out what we would have if we were to end up with a mutant of the species. Would that mutant be a human being? Whether it was just so big or as tall as I am now, how would we treat that human existence? I could not come up with an answer, which then led me to conclude that we have to do something to reduce the risk of our scientists going off on a tangent and doing things that would prejudice the whole human race.
Lying in the background of this, of course, is a way of looking at the human race which rests on a foundation of religious faith. No matter what one's faith happens to be, I think all religious faiths subscribe to the belief that the human race is here because it has been willed by God and our position here is very much in the hands of God or a god. Although there may be some divine providence out there most of the time or some of the time, the human race has made mistakes in ways that we do not think our God has willed. We fight these huge wars, we do pretty mean and evil things, and sometimes we have accidents.
The bill attempts to regulate different aspects of human reproduction. I know that one of the areas of debate concerns the use of human stem cells. There are two or more different types of stem cells. It is the embryonic stem cell that has become the focus of some of these issues. Is the way the embryonic stem cell is produced, the way we use it and the way it is or is not protected compliant with an application of moral rules? There is some division of opinion on this, but I think most of us would agree that where there is doubt and concern we must take the safe route. We must protect human life wherever it comes into existence. We must not abuse our position, our condition here on the human planet, whether one chooses to view it as a scientific, biological one or as an extrapolation of creation by God subject to moral obligation.
To wrap up, I want to indicate that I am very pleased we have come this far. I do not really regret that it has taken all this time provided that we have a good product, a good piece of legislation. I hope we can take the time to consider it. I hope that Canadians will have an opportunity to follow the debate and that in the end we will have an opportunity to pass a piece of legislation that will serve all of us, not just in Canada but around the world, including scientists and the community, in the hope that our work in this field will produce benefits for the human race in health and in human reproduction and will do it in a way that will protect our global, collective human futures.